HDD Assault Cannon

Anonymous Coward writes "Check out what these crazy fools have done. One has to ask, exactly how much time these people have on their hands? Got a couple of old 2GB Hard drives. You too could join in on their madness. Hard Drive Assault Cannons for all!"

Comments

What's the point of even clicking anymore?

[mostaphalles]

I gave up clicking on links to articles on any post that doesn't link to the top 100 company's on the Fortune 500.

Even then i don't think it would be too complicated to create a Slashdot Google-Cache-esqe type mirroring system (Open Source of course) so we can at least read the articles...but then again most commenters don't even read them before unleashing their retarded wisdom on the Slashdot masses

But yeah i agree with the article microsoft sucks!

--
sig shmig...

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[RLW]

Can't one force a cache on google? Try searching for the exact URL in quotes on google. Then when it comes back with "If it's a valid URL then click here..." then click there. Then search for the term again in Google and the new URL will show up in the list. Then it will be chached over the next cycle. Then post to slash to the cached pages.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Shakrai]

No amount of bandwidth can withstand the power of a swarm of geeks...

At least not the outgoing bandwidth on a standard ASDL connection. Are they that crazy or was this just a publicity stunt from day one? How did it get by the editors? How many ACs will reply with "Your new here right?" now that I've made a comment about the editors not catching stuff like this?

Again for laughs and giggles:

(104):tim@pigeon:{11:45}:~# host hddcannon.kicks-ass.net
hddcannon.kicks-ass.net has address 202.0.40.113
(105):tim@pigeon:{11:45}:~# host 202.0.40.113 113.40.0.202.IN-ADDR.ARPA domain name pointer 202-0-40-113.adsl.paradise.net.nz
(106):tim@pigeon:{11:45}:~#

Weep for all the lost magnets

[G4from128k]

I prefer to disassemble old HDs. The voice coils and spindle motors tend to contain insanely strong rare earth magnets. And the platters make pleasant wind chimes (especialy if you have a mix of 3.5", 5", and 8" platters). I suppose one could also get a few bucks from the cast aluminum anclosures.

Slashdotted? How about Cachedotted?

[erroneus]

Given that mention of any given web site often spells doom for anything but the most rugged servers and the biggest of pipes, Slashdot should come up with a web site cache tool that would hold the story/article/pages for us.

Okay, google does that for us, so why not link to the Google page rather than the actual site?

Re:Sweet!!

[pjwhite]

I'll take the platters. They make great wind chimes.

Another HDD hack

[jkazor]

I find HDD mechanical hacks to be intriguing. I have often thought it would be cool to make RC cars out of old Hard Drives and have races.

Mechanically, the hack would be pretty straightforward: To to drive the wheels, attach a worm gear to the disk shaft. To operate the steering, utilize the arm that guides the disk head.

I am not sure, however, how to interface with an RC transmitter. Any ideas?

Re:Another HDD hack

[mrelectricocean]

electronic steering servo on top of the disk? maybe... that could control the steering by being attatched to the arm and would also be able to have a receiver plugged into it! i thought about that way too much... i shouldn't have... *hangs head in shame and walks away*

Re:Another HDD hack

[drinkypoo]

It is not trivially done because the motor in a hard drive is a stepper motor, which means it has a couple wires for power and some wires for data, and you can generally read their position (not true of all of them) as well as tell them to move n steps forward or backwards, or just continually feed it pulses to tell it to step. This functionality is used to maintain a constant rotational speed without having to build a (relatively) high power motor control circuit onto the PC board, instead controlling the motor digitally and at low voltage and current levels.

RC radio receivers control servos by varying signal pulse width to a servo, or was it by varying duty cycle? I forget but the point is that this signal is not going to be compatible with the control mechanism of either the stepper or the head control system (which is typically a voice coil, old-technology hard drives used steppers for seeking as well as for spinning the platters) so you're going to have to look up the data sheet on the drive stepper, and reverse engineer the voice coil driving the heads or look up the data sheet on the seek stepper, and design some circuit to sit in between the radio receiver and the hard drive and convert the appropriate inputs to the appropriate outputs.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[CaptnMArk]

I have said before. What we need is a P2P distributed browser cache.

Disposal is much more fun in an emergency

[John Jorsett]

I worked at a DoD site once. If we were in danger of being overrun by the enemy (since it was in Hawaii, I guess that'd be either the North Koreans, China, or the Japanese out for a little payback), we were supposed to haul the crypto gear and all storage media out to the parking lot, smack the hell out of it with sledges, pile thermite on top and melt it into slag. I was sorely disappointed that I never got the opportunity.

Sneaky denial of service attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's to say the poor idiot who's server /. just slammed, is actually the guy who submitted it in the first place?

With the volume of hits /. generates, this site was destined to go down in a heartbeat, but that could have been the submitter's intention.

As it's been stated numerous times, this poor schmuck now probably has no bandwidth, has probably gotten the attention of his ISP (and all the repurcussions of violating their EULA and home-based webserver operations that so many seem to have)..

Wouldn't it be amusing if you all were just unwitting pawns in a vicious denial of service attack?

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[azav]

YES. It appears that we need a bittorrent browser plugin client for /.