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Ant Farm PC
secolactico writes "This has got to be the coolest case mod I've come across. An ant farm in your PC case. Too bad there are no pics of the case actually on a working PC. It'd be interesting to observe the effect that the temperature and vibration of an operating PC would have on the ants."
why does simpsons come to mind?
Im picturing homer in space when the ants get loose in the space ship.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Any other Terry Pratchett fans around here reminded of Hex, the ant-powered computer (of Unseen University)?
:-)
Now, THAT would be cool. To overclock, just add caffeine to the water supply
This
*groan*
Let's fill up the case with internal strobe lights and other various case mod lights and see if ants can have seizures!
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
It would be interesting to see if the heat generated by the CPU/etc killed the ants.
-- Never monkey with another Monkey's monkey
http://forum.kingsnake.com/whats/messages/6849.htm l
Overclocked Watercooled Ants?
Do they work faster with higher bus speeds?
/sig
I happened to catch the episode where they showed this thing... Yes it works, no the heat/vibrations didn't kill the ants. It was a pretty cool mod.
s/ants/fish/
then you have a cool case
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Stained glass case mod (by a hemophiliac too, that's just crazy)
Fish tank case mod (with genuine Neon Tetras)
... 2003
Live action expansion pack (tm)
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
this case could not be moved since it would destroy the tunnels or worse let the bugs loose inside the computer.
I'm waiting for the "sea monkey" case
AdFuel
This may not be the best idea, i was watching something on the discovery channel the other day about fire ants. It was talking about all the damage they've caused across the south because they're atracted to electrical fields. They short out computers, traffic lights, appliances, and make hell for the linemen because they ussually nest under high voltage lines. They had a bunch on a live pc board, and they just swarmed over certain components, the ones i'm assuming that had strong em fields. This may be just fire ants though, i have no idea.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of old jokes? Talk about a nightmare...
This puts me in mind of the computer in Pterry Pratchett's books, Hex. It's effectively a colony of ants which move things about, thus performing operations, calculations, etc. often of a thaumatical nature. There's a sign mentioned in one of the books, "Ant Hill Inside"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If it were Unix, the ants would all ignore anything unexpected, even if that meant walking into it repeatedly.
especially if you have ever been anywhere near fire ants. (for the record, I used to be in Louisiana - and I concur every bit with the article.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Hammerhead sharks can detect subtle electric fields -- the "hammers" are actually sensor arrays, which the sharks use to find the bioelectric signature of prey animals buried in the mud. The sharks also follow geo-electric paths to feeding grounds.
-kgj
Aren't ants sensitive to electromagnetism/radio-frequency waves? Won't having them so near an EM source as a PC's innards do strange things to their behaviour (I'm presuming it won't be "good"/healthy/conducive for the ants...).
I think she'd kind of grasp the irony.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
people said that Linux wasn't ready for your ants and uncles...
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
He claims to have no idea where he got the idea to put an ant farm in a PC.
;-)
Among other obvious sources, here is one of my posts from a past Ask Slashdot: Pets
Of course the guys at TechTV must read every little comment on Slashdot.
Or maybe it's just another one of those "critical mass of knowledge" effects, where technology (or boredom) reaches such a level that an idea springs to life simultaneously for multiple individuals.
...
It'd be interesting to observe the effect that the temperature and vibration of an operating PC would have on the ants.
What's the point. Everyone knows all we really want to do it whip out the old magnifying glass. Hehe.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I used to have a pentium 133 that had a huntsman spider living inside. It didn't bother me so I didn't bother it, they're not dangerous.
This computer was so bad that when I booted it I had to manually kickstart the fan to start spinning by tapping it a bit, kind of like how they used to spin those propellors on airplanes to start them up.
Anyway, I thought "MIR" was tha appropriate name to give to this poor sod. It was decommisioned around a year ago.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
As a physicist and a biologist, I can confirm that it will fuck them up.
The problem with predatory fish is they tend to live fast and die young, either by design (insert pet shop conspiracy here), or because of sick feeder fish (insert another pet shop conspiracy here). My friend had a bunch of those cool little barracudas that will gobble up guppies, but they would always die withing 2 - 4 weeks. I thought maybe he was overfeeding them, but I dunno...
Other fish however last a long time, as long as they don't eat each other.
Photo Caption:
The opening is how the ants get their food
Um, how does that work? Is it that the ants leave the colony through that big wide opening and look for food around the floor of your workspace?
Huh?
I've found all sorts of strange critters living in my systems. Back about ten years ago, I opened a 386 to find a Black Widow merrily tending her egg sacks in a web built around the power supply. I had a system offline for a couple of months; When I started it up last week, I heard something inside. Upon examination, I found an anole (small lizard) inside the case. Those dang things get in everywhere... they even move in with my Uromastyx sometimes. Must think he's their big brother or something. But I can't see building a specific house for ants in my computer. After all, I live in Florida, and wage war against fire ants almost daily...
All about me
Do you have any information about this?
Enter the wonderful world of Lspace.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ask any air conditioner repairman. The ants get stuck inside the relays and cause the relay to fail. Sometimes they eat the insulation of the wiring, cause it to short and trip the breaker. So don't be suprised if your power supply starts smoking one day.
The server is /.'ed, here is an ASCII-image of the ants:
-
-
more picture here
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
C'mon now, no more making fun of Windows for being buggy. That's like making fun of a retarded kid wearing a crash helmet. Sure, it's worth a laugh, but the laugh isn't socially acceptable. Keep it on the inside.
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
The Lspace links to a veritable treasure trove of Pratchettiana but there's so much there, you'll have to have a poke around to find what you're after.
Terry Pratchett is an English writer known for his Discworld novels, a series that began purely as a humourous parody of fantasy books. The Discworld stories have evolved over time, a reflection of Pratchett's own development
The HEX is the Discworld version of a computer made by the guys in the HEM (High Energy Magic) building. It contains ants. A buggy system indeed *ducks*. Some of the more common error messages include: "++ Permission Denied +++ ++ Out Of Cheese Error +++ and ++ Redo From Start +++".
I returned home that evening and noticed the screen was doing an unusual flickering. When I snapped on the lights, I found the system crawling with bugs like ... well, you know. I took it outside, pulling out all the components and dusting them off with my trusty Spray-Air, but it was too late.
The next day I opened the power supply and found about 25 traces of crispy ants neatly bridging the traces on the board inside, as well as 100 or so crispy but unattached.
The most annoying part was finding another half-sized Compaq power supply to fit the half-sized space in the full-sized tower case. (RANT)What the heck is wrong with Compaq's designers, anyway? Every case & component in their PC line seems to be curved or an odd size ...(/RANT)
I was worried they'd come back, since the house had only jalousie (yeah, and lousy they were, too) windows, which couldn't be shut tight enough to keep out flies much less smaller-than-average-ants, but they never came back.
*These "sugar ants" were brown in color, a bit smaller than the average black mound-building ant and a LOT smaller that the "Texas Red-Devil" fire ants I hope never to see again ... They had no interest in anything in the house, including the kitchen trash and even sugar spilled on the counter, but the sweet sweet smell of the transformer sure pulled them in!
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If you really want an out-there case, then you just have to check out this.
"It'd be interesting to observe the effect that the temperature and vibration of an operating PC would have on the ants."
'nuff said.
today is spelling optional day.
"your local bookshop" had around 3,000 hits but it didn't help.
Back in my college days, living in a house with a few other guys we had a bad ant problem. We first thought that maybe we should clean up the week old chinese food and yesterday's pizza, but that did not work. It got so bad that we were obsessed with our clean living habits in the kitchen. Finally, after living with a new cleaniness lifestyle we were able to track the source of the ants. They were making homebase in the base station of the cordless phone unit. Apparently, they were attracted to the glues on the PCB in the phone base unit. It certainly wasn't the main 'ant house' which had to be outside somewhere, but it was definitely the main place where they made their mystic ant communications to invade the rest of the place. This is no joke, once we elimated that phone base station our ant problems were no more.
'why are there bugs all over your computer?'
'those aren't bugs, they're features'
humans will do themselves in, and we dolphins will rule the earth!
well, 70% of it...
erm, okay, 25% of that 70% that hasn't been (badly) poluted yet...
actually, erm, 10% of that 25% of the 70% that hasn't had its ecosystem seriously impacted due to over-fishing...
ahh fsck it. i'm moving to ganymede.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Ant ain't just a cool Java tool!
Imagine a beowulf clusteAAArrrrrgggghhhhh Get Them Off Of Me!!!
Downsize DC Today!
It strikes me as being somewhat unethical to put ants into such extreme conditions (high temperature and lots of vibration) without any purpose other than 'looking cool'. At least when we send them up to outer space we have a scientific goal in mind. When you have them on the side of your case you are just causing them harm for no real gain.
Begging the question is when the conclusion of an argument is also a premise of that argument.
Apparently, they will eat it (or try to) as PCBs contain some foodstuffs. Same goes for plastics. Anyone have details of what is included. I forgot to eat my daily dose of 486 mobos today and I am feeling a bit low.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Think about it. Bees don't like their hive to get too hot, cos then they all die. So, if it does they station a whole bunch of workers on the outside and get them to flap their little chitinous wings to cool it all down. It's a self cooling case!
Admittedly the bees buzzing all the time might be louder than an overclocked AMD with an ill chosen fan, but you have to admit; it would be a unique case mod. And you get honey!
So, is a self-cooling-honey producing-beehive case a great idea or what?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Does that mean it would be possible to manipulate them using electric fields? You could put a backplate on the ant farm with a matrix of electrodes. The ants would be attracted to the ones which were switched on. You could control it from a parallel port to have an ascii display composed of swarming ants. Not only would this be a cool hack, it would completely creep out anyone who saw it in action. IANAB - does anyone know if this would work?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
It's incompatible with RAID arrays.
Yes, I'm ashamed of myself for that one :)
I think the electromagnetic field rather than the heat, noise, or vibration would be the worst for the ants. (yes, i know heat is a form of EM radiation, just bear with me :P) Ants are known to infest stuff like transformer boxes and stuff because they're lured by the EM field. I imagine the EM field generated by case fan motors/circuit boards/procs/drives/PS would have a similar effect, I.E. drive the ants insane. I remember Another Story where someone's iBook (like mine) got infested with ants. They must have been attracted by the EM.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
A similar case mod could be achieved using mixed layers of soil and worms. Patterns are traced by the worms as the travel through the alternating colour soils. I'd be more inclined to have worms in my house than ants as well.
I would like a screen mod with an ant farm!
An extra glass in front of the screen. Some sand in the bottom, almost covering the taskbar panel. And ants crawling over the windows, chasing the mouse pointer.
Creepy!
)9TSS
Don't know about that, but they sure as hell contain a lot of poisonstuffs...
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
My room had a door to the outside, so I would leave it open to let the anoles in and probably had a good 4 or 5 living in my room at any given time. Since they were there, the ants were not (nor were the cockroaches/palmetto bugs). They took good care of me and they stayed away from the photography chemicals (my room doubled as a darkroom...guess they didn't like the smell...this was another reason why I would leave my door open).
However, sometimes they did there job a little too well. Though I would rarely find any insect life in my room, there were the sad occasions when I would find a dead and mummified anole when cleaning. :-(
Never found one in my computer case though. I wonder what attracted one to yours (heat? electric field? curiosity?)
Anyway, in the war on bugs (hehe), natures defense turned out to be the best defense in my experience. Especially the geckos. If you have an insect problem and can effectively seal off your house/apartment/room, catch or buy a gecko and set it loose in there. Don't forget to catch it after a few days, because it will probably eat everything and you need to keep it from starving. Then you can either set it free, or keep it in an aquarium and feed it crickets and stuff until you need it to be out and around again.
At least, these were my experiences. YMMV.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
This is too funny seeing this here. A couple weeks back we had some ants on the kitchen table (a few here and there) and I got rid of 'em. A while later there were a few more. I didn't see anything sticky that they might be going for, but I decided to clear off the table and wipe it down to make sure.
Well, one of the things I had on the table that needed clearing off was my laptop. When I lifted it up there were a bunch of ants underneath it and that's when I noticed there were a bunch more crawling in and out of the cooling holes. I saw at least one of them with some kind of a crumb or something and since I seriously doubt he got it from inside the laptop, my best guess was that he was carrying it from wherever he found it to store it in the laptop.
I had the laptop on the kitchen table for a few days at this point and it had been on the whole time so it was running plenty hot. The ants didn't seem to mind at all. I guess if they can live in Arizona then they wouldn't mind the interior of a laptop either. The only thing I never figured out is why they would go there in the first place? Was there some kind of noise drawing them in? Did they prefer the higher heat environment?
TW
Great Whites have those pores on their noses. In an old (70s?) TV documentary, they try to keep a juvenile White in captivity, but it keeps banging its head into the wall of its circular loop of a tank -- because some wiring's giving off an electrical field near the tank wall there, IIRC.
Wonder if this is a problem for commonly kept species, like Brown sharks or Nurses? Maybe it's more your pelagic species that rely on this sense so much that they get distracted in a tank? Those'd be the ones that would need it for navigation more...
(Maybe our dream of sharks in the walls of titanium laptops will go forever unfulfilled.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
God kills a hundred ants.