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

broken already (it's lame)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anonymous Coward", the submitter, says "Check out what these crazy fools have done. One has to ask, exactly how much time these people have on their hands?"

Apparently you have enough time to speak in the third person about yourself. If you're going to astroturf your website at least make sure your machine and bandwidth can handle the load, idiot.

To those that couldn't load it: all you missed was a very slow loading gallery with 50 pictures and Quicktime movies of someone taking apart a hard disk and attaching shit to it.

Next story, please.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[djb6]

Do SATA drives make for faster cannons?

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Anonymous Coward]

Tsk. What a waste of hard drives. Someone could have put Linux on them and set up a firewall.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Anonymous Coward]

I've received email on how to increase my pipe.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[spamtest]

Super Slam!

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}:~#

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Hogwash McFly]

The logical thing to do with an egg is cook it and eat it, but throwing it at someone is much more fun :D

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[sydb]

Woe, not whoa.

I don't mean to be a Nazi but the difference is so fundamental is must be elucidated.

"Woe" means, in this context, distress or affliction, misfortune.

"Whoa" (also spelled "wo", "woa" or even "who") means "slow down horsey".

No links, 'cos my Oxford English Dictionary does not support HTTP.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[samhain_tm]

Yeah... but I have about 50 2 gig harddrives... how many firewalls should I set up for myself?

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[gbjbaanb]

Yeah, but my dictionary does have a link for Whoa

The OED, good book, requires subscription though :(

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[BlackHawk-666]

Are they SCSI? I could do with at least one or two of those. Perhaps selling them on ebay might be a better option. And for the record, it would be for my Kurzweil synth that can only address drives up to 2GB.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Yeah! You *should* build a wall out of them! And in the middle of the wall you should put one 3-gig drive instead of a 2. Then put a brightly colored sticker on the drive. Then, when your friend points to that drive and asks if it's special, you can answer...

"No, it's not special."

"So what is it?" he'll say.

"All in all, it's just another gig in the wall."

The same joke will probably work with a pile of NIC cards, but either way you're probably going to get the shit beaten out of you.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[dAzED1]

omfg, your post should be +10 funny. I only laugh once a week on slashdot, and 90% of those are laughing *at* the person. Bravo man, bravo.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[breon.halling]

Woe, not whoa
(snip)
"Whoa" (also spelled "wo", "woa" or even "who") means "slow down horsey".

But slowing is exactly what that webserver's going to do!

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[randomblast]

Assuming you have the rest of the hardware required to build 50 working boxes, you should build all 50 firewalls, put various OSes, firewalls, packet filters, antiviruses, and spam killers on them, all with different configurations, and chain them all together.

Aside from the decreased security of having loads of boxes forwarding packets to your main network, at least one of which is bound to have a vulnerability, you get to dig through 50 config files when you want to start a server :D

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Anonymous Custard]

Then, you could use that wall with the 3 gig as a bull's eye for target practice. When you hit it, you would send it to "the great gig in the sky".

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[gstoddart]

"Whoa" (also spelled "wo", "woa" or even "who") means "slow down horsey"

Or, in Keanu-speak, it is merely a response to any event happening around onesself, expressing shock, dismay, humour, joy, or any of a bunch of things which can happen to a person.

=)

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[bugnuts]

The OED, good book

The plot is pretty thin. I had already guessed the ending by Chapter Q.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[RailGunner]

The Slashdotting of his pathetic little box is probably enough, but if we want to get really nasty we can always fark him. Not that I'm advocating piling on even more pain on this astroturfing goof.. oh wait.. yes I am.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Deraj DeZine]

I know Kung-Fu.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[PaxTech]

>> The OED, good book

> The plot is pretty thin. I had already guessed the ending by Chapter Q.

Yep. The zebra did it.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Jackal82277]

8MB HDD - $27

1ft long piece of PVC - $17

A can of hair spray - $4.50

2 idiots with a 2004 version of a potato gun - Priceless

2 idiots getting there whole ISP DOS'ed by /. - utterly fucken priceless

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[cant]

'Money can't buy you happiness' - Poor people Keep telling yourself that money is related to happiness and eventually you'll believe it. No sense in having higher standards. Ahhh, the American dream. It's just that easy.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[LedZeplin]

the zymurgist did it in most editions.

mmm brewing beer.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, not all happiness comes from money and not everything can be bought with money. However, money can buy you happiness because it buys you freedom and choice. Say your girlfriend phones you up at work and dumps you. You can go home to a shitty one bedroom apartment with a leaky roof or go home to a nice warm house with nice food to cook for dinner and maybe a few beers. The only difference here is money. Propose that situation to all those 'money can't buy you happiness' people and see if they say that they would be happy either way. After all, it's only money right? If money isn't related to happiness then why do people play the lottery, or why do they get excited over a 5 dollar discount? I'll say again, although money isn't the be all and end all, I'll be damned if it doesn't make life a lot easier. These people can keep telling themselves that working 12 hours a day just to exist on bread and water is 'a living' and eventually they'll start to believe it.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to go. You see, what you've done is take a subtle joke that most of us already got and explained it to death so that it's no longer funny. Very interesting. Do you do this often?

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[kevcol]

2GB disks command about $10 on ebay. The time it takes to prepare the auction, run it (communicate with buyers usually), pack then ship the item is probably about 60-120 minutes of work depending on how close you are to a post office. It's less work if sold in a lot, but when sold one by one, I found it was a waste of time unless you have a lot of volume and are set up for it.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Jackal82277]

Anonymous Coward huh ? Grow some sac and post like a real man. Anybody can stand in the street and throw a rock from a distance but a real man stands in the street and welcomes death with his head high. Your a scriptkitty ass is trying to run with the big dogs dude, stick to posting on Atari forums about how great the old days were and leave the intelligent posting to the /.ers

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[djh101010]

Wow, way to go.

Now you've gone and done it, ArthurDent, you've annoyed an AC who may or may not be the astroturfing submitter. OH, the horrors...

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[FreakWent]

The distinction here is subtle; we're talkinag bout happiness as opposed to pleasure -- cash buys lots and lots of pleasure, that's what marketing is all about.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[kyhwana]

Oh man! That guy is so screwed, since dsl in NZ has data caps, and you pay per meg once you go over that cap. And it's EXPENSIVE. It ranges from 10-20cents per MEG.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[gurumeditationerror]

Whoa

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Rexdude]

That is one hell of a misquoted proverb... it should read 'The LOVE of money can't buy you happiness' It is targeted at misers, those who hoard money instead of spending it on the things that can make them happy

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Hanzie]

I really don't care that I burned my mod points an hour ago.

You were already at 5, and I couldn't bounce your comment higher.

It definetly deserves the +10 funny, though.

And my wife thinks so too.

hanzie.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[child_of_mercy]

Plus an unfortunate number of women are attracted to money.

So if you have lots of it then you get more love without spending a penny.

Sad but true.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[Wolfrider]

' apt-get install webmin-lvm '...

--Buy a few cheap Ultra-66 IDE controllers (if you can still find them), LVM the drives together. Then run ' badblocks ' on the LVM device. Just be sure to invest in another powersupply as well...

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[BlackHawk-666]

That's how I was thinking the day before I decided to bundle up my shit and sell it on e-bay instead of heaving it into the bin. I made 160 from listing my old CPU/motherboard/etc, money that went straight into purchasing a really cool synth. It took maybe 3 hours of my spare time to package up the stuff, and a short trip to the post office. Easily worth the price.

Re:broken already (it's lame)

[kevcol]

It all depends on the market rate for the hardware being sold. Your CPU/mobo combo was clearly more attractive a purchase to someone. You can see right now what a 2GB drive commands if you check completed auctions. 7-10 bucks US. I've sold a lot of used computer equipment on ebay. I always checked out market rate for the used item first. If it was less than a certain amount, I would donate it to the computer recylcing center before spending time on an auction. You just have to figure out how much your time is worth and if you are going to cover it in the sale. That's all I'm saying.

Sweet!!

[hookedup]

We have boxes of old drives that we need to get rid of here at work, but have to drill holes into them then have them melted down or buried in a landfill. This would be way more fun..

*Emailing boss the link*

Re:Sweet!!

[Forge]

You work for the Department Of Deffence or a related agency right?

The DOD rules for HDD disposal.

1. Triple Overwrite security erase.
2. De-gauze with a powerful electro magnet.
3. Crush drives with a cement roller.
4. Melt fragments into slag.
5. Bury Slag in a secure waist disposal site under a minimum of 6' of cement.

Re:Sweet!!

[Auntie Virus]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of HD cannons!

Re:Sweet!!

[robslimo]

NO! Send your old HDDs to me! Or at least save the neodymium head servo magnets for me.

I'm only half kidding, as I'd like to have a couple of hundred magnets for various projects. Mostly projects related to the link in my sig.

-RatOmeter

Re:Sweet!!

[RetroGeek]

6. Take backup tape home
7. Profit!!

Re:Sweet!!

[Hogwash McFly]

Just the other day I destroyed the 2GB HDD from our old family PC. Can't beat the feeling of putting the claw end of a clawhammer through those shiny platters, a great stress reliever!

Re:Sweet!!

[hookedup]

Close, different country though :)

And once it's been melted into slag, more often than not, that's the end of it's life. No 6' of cement on top, which is just too tinfoil hat for me.

Re:Sweet!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! The missing option!!

Re:Sweet!!

[pjwhite]

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

Re:Sweet!!

[robslimo]

Been there, done that.

The only trouble is finding platters of different sizes to avoid a monotone. Also some of the platters are some kind of plastic and don't ring at all.

Re:Sweet!!

[exhilaration]

I've got an open hard drive (purely decorational) next to me - where's the magnet? Is it big enough to be fun?

Re:Sweet!!

[AndyRobinson]

5. Bury Slag in a secure waist disposal site under a minimum of 6' of cement

Waist - noun - the part of the human trunk between the bottom of the rib cage and the pelvis.

If the DOD guys dispose of the waists how to they keep their pants from falling down?

Re:Sweet!!

[Infinite93]

5. Bury Slag in a secure waist disposal site under a minimum of 6' of cement.

Isn't burying it under a liposuction clinic a little extreme?

Re:Sweet!!

[Metallic Matty]

Or you could do what two of my good buddies did in high school a couple of years ago. They were in a robot competition (much akin to Battlebots, but smaller.) Somehow (I wasn't part of the building process, but I did see the final product,) they mounted a hard drive platter and used it as a type of spinning buzz-saw weapon. While I was not lucky enough to see it in action, I heard it was very successful in the early rounds but broke at some point.

Incidentally, another funny idea we once had was, we were just sitting around playing with a 1.25 floppy drive, popping a disk in and out. Somehow this lead us to replace the ejection springs so that when you popped out a disk it would fly out at a pretty good clip. Disk wars became the game of the day.

Re:Sweet!!

[WyrdOne]

Magnet is at the back of the R/W arm. (The arm moves when the control board induces a current in a coil of wire held between two rare-earth magnets. This causes the arm to move. By varying the current used you can precisely move the arm.)

Harddrive magnets make the best fridge magnets.

Re:Sweet!!

[welsh git]

As someone recently trying to source a 2Gig hard disk due to a failure with my trusty 486 router/firewall, this article is a particular punch in the gob...

Re:Sweet!!

[robslimo]

They're kinda small on newer drives, but are quite strong, neodymium-iron-boron magnets.

OK, you see head assembly? At the opposite end from the heads, past the pivot point, there will be a plastic molded part with a coil of copper wire. You may not see it well 'cause it'll be obscured by the magnet assembly (a flat metal bracket with mounting flanges on each end).

Remove any fasteners on the magnet assembly; they're probably small Torx head screws. You'll also need to remove the head assembly by unscrewing it at the pivot point (or if you don't care about wrecking it more, just pry vigorously at the magnet assembly with a medium screwdriver).

Now, the magnets are epoxied to the metal brackets. To remove them with the least likelihood of breaking them, grip a flange end of the bracket with ViseGrips (locking pliers) or similar. Holding the pliers, strike the other flange end against a hard (concrete preferably) surface, gently at first and increasing in force until the magnet(s) pop off. If your using just enough force, they'll pop off and then snap back to the bracket.

Have fun!

-RatOmeter

Re:Sweet!!

[twoflower]

2.De-gauze with a powerful electro magnet.

That's degauss, actually. To de-gauze something would be to remove an outer covering or wrapping made of thin, absorbent silk or cotton material.

Spelling is important.

Re:Sweet!!

[Jerf]

"Break the law" always seems to be the first choice for filling in the "???" part of the Underpants Gnome's plan, doesn't it?

Re:Sweet!!

[jhagler]

Imagine a cluster of Beowulf cannons.

Re:Sweet!!

[flink]

Wouldn't drilling different sized holes in them work?

Re:Sweet!!

[RetroGeek]

"Break the law" always seems to be the first choice

Nah, just the lazy-man's choice.

It takes work to produce value. Criminals want the easy way out.

Disclaimer: Yes I know some criminals put a lot of effort into planning and executing a crime. BUT, they are not producing value.

Of course it is doubtful whether some C level people produce value either, but that is another thread...

Re:Sweet!!

[UberDeveloper26]

Wouldn't "Break The Law" be a prequel to "Steal Underpants"? Because even intent is a crime. These damn Gnomes are breaking several laws: Breaking And Entering Criminal Mischief Possession Of Stolen Property (With Intent To Sell) Burglary And I'm pretty sure that the one Gnome that got caught was smokin' the reefer.

Re:Sweet!!

[MrNonchalant]

Even simpler, send them here.

Re:Sweet!!

[drinkypoo]

Out of curiosity, what does the 1.25 in your floppy drive indicate? DSHD 5.25" floppies were 1.2MB. DSDD 3.5" were 720kB, 800kB or 880kB depending on format (PC, Mac, and Amiga respectively.) DHHD 3.5" are 1.44 (Mac, PC) or 1.7-something (Amiga). I've never seen a 1.25" floppy disk, though I guess they could exist.

Aw crap I just found a note saying that there was a 1.25MB format used in Japan. Oh well, guess that's what I get for not websearching first. I think I'll go ahead and hit submit anyway to save someone else the trouble of going through this :)

Re:Sweet!!

[Feztaa]

Who are you to say that they don't wrap their HDD's in gauze, which then needs to be removed?

Re:Sweet!!

[Muad'Dave]

6. Look up definition of the word homophone. (gauze=Gauss, waist=waste)

Re:Sweet!!

[photon317]

The real DoD rules are public knowledge. The data overwrite is seven times over with various patterns designed to make for a fairly secure erase. A defense contractor I once worked at also required that outgoing HDD media (dead media returning to vendors or going in the trash or whatever) had to be degaussed before exiting the datacenter.

Re:Sweet!!

[RollingThunder]

secure waist disposal site

Is that another name for an exclusive gym?

Re:Sweet!!

[dedalus2000]

Your right the platters are very musically talented.

Re:Sweet!!

[Ctrl-Z]

I'm not sure about you, but for me Gauss and gauze don't sound alike at all (except they both start with G).

Re:Sweet!!

[Wingie]

Once upon a time I made a software pirate costume for Halloween. My trusty pirate sidearm was a floppy drive that shot a disk out at medium velocity. It's very effective against drunk people and/or eyes.

Re:Sweet!!

[Muad'Dave]

I agree, but they apparently do to the original poster. Accidentally misspelling a word is one thing; using the wrong word, especially a homophone or near-homophone, is a crime.

Re:Sweet!!

[drinkypoo]

And I'm pretty sure that the one Gnome that got caught was smokin' the reefer.

Yo, I'm gonna make a run for it, B!

Re:Sweet!!

[Nogami_Saeko]

Neodymium-iron-boron magnets are also extremely brittle. You need to be very careful when removing them (especially flat magnets from inside HD assemblies), or they'll snap/fracture. The chrome plating usually flakes-off quite easily too (some people dip them in that rubberizing stuff from the hardware store to protect them.)

You can also buy them from www.wondermagnets.com fairly cheap (I got a bunch a few years back and have them all over the place).

Here's a short link to the goodies:

http://tinyurl.com/cm6s

Some of their BIG magnets are very dangerous and need to be handled with gloves on - put two of the big #72s together and they'll crush your fingers flat. Another website (I forgot the link) also has even more powerful magnets - over 40,000 Gauss (owch).

N.

Re:Sweet!!

[d34thm0nk3y]

you know, 1.25 meg, the amount of data you could actually fit on those crappy 3.5" disks

Re:Sweet!!

[Garridan]

I did that in high school, too... I got mine to fly a maximum of 7' (2m) or so. Whenever I tried to outfit the drive with more or bigger springs, it'd warp the casing to the point that the disk wouldn't eject.

Re:Sweet!!

[U.I.D 754625]

Just drop some screws in there, they'll stick to the magnet.

Re:Sweet!!

[Lost Race]

I've only taken apart one HDD -- a 340 MB Conner IDE from about 1993. I found its actuator magnet assembly to be held together entirely by the force of the magnets. No glue or fasteners at all, just two magnets attracting each other with a small non-magnetic bracket separating them. At first I thought they were glued on, the magnetic force was so strong.

Re:Sweet!!

[drinkypoo]

You mean on oddly-formatted DSDD? DSHD 3.5" disks have an unformatted capacity of "2.0 MO" which I take to mean real Megabytes (2*10^6 bytes) which is considerably more than 1.25MB.

DSDD are 1.0 MO unformatted, but format (real world) to 720kB on a PC etc etc as stated in my prior post.

Re:Sweet!!

[Forge]

1/5 dozen spelling flames and this is the 1st one that gives the correct spelling.

It never occured to anyone else that I just can't spell properly. So anything that's at valid word and is pronounced correctly will slip by me. I.e. I use the wrong "here" a lot and I am not sure about "occored" in the previous sentence.

Re:Sweet!!

[Forge]

Guilty as charged. This happens when you use a computer spell checker to mitigate the effects of my particular variant of dyslexia.

The upshot is that I don't misunderstand what I read. :)

Re:Sweet!!

[MemoryAid]

Actually, around here, spelling is impotent.

Re:Sweet!!

[loose electron]

Suggested option, put the metal that the magnets are glued to in a vise, and bend the metal with vise grips. this breaks the glue mount. That then allows you to take the magnets off. They make great refrigerator magnets, or holding a book to a refrigerator as well.

Re:Sweet!!

[Captain DaFt]

5. Bury Slag in a secure waist disposal site under a minimum of 6' of cement.

Isn't burying it under a liposuction clinic a little extreme?

Ehh? I thought he was talking about EATING it!!
(Disposed of *many* burritos that way, seems fairly secure as I can't seem to shed the extra weight!) };->

Re:Sweet!!

[Muad'Dave]

I'm lucky - I only swap lower case 'b' and 'd'. I certainly don't condemn those who have a cognitive reason. The folks I rail against are those who have never read words they use in speaking. To me it is evidence of a dumbing down of the populace. Some favorites:

• Two Whit -> to wit
• persay -> per se
• ayee -> i.e.
• faint -> feint
• all the other homophones

I guess they don't realize that words have meaning beyond their sound when written.

Re:Sweet!!

[UID1000000]

i can hook you up with one (closer to 4GB) but i'm not sure if there are taxes/duties to the UK. I'm in the US. Let me know. Thanks.

Too bad...

[TopShelf]

I guess they could have used a more defensive tool to withstand the inevitable slashdotting...

Re:Too bad...

[rwiedower]

Yeas, the only ass being kicked right now is that of their pitiful webserver.

Re:Too bad...

[vanyel]

What's worse is that it was slashdotted before it even went public! As a subscriber, I got to see while still "red" and though the base page loaded, it was very slow.

Obvously the server got hit with one of these..

[SCSi]

Slashdotted already.. Probably had one of those 2 gig drives in it, and filled it full of apache logs.

Re:Obvously the server got hit with one of these..

[crass751]

Funny, I'm in a networking class, and the professor just got finished discussing the slashdot effect.

Re:Obvously the server got hit with one of these..

[pegr]

It was hopelessly slashdotted before it hit the main page... No Wayback machine archive... No Google cache...

Re:Obvously the server got hit with one of these..

[GNUman]

I don't know if to mod you funny or interesting or insightful...

Re:Obvously the server got hit with one of these..

[iphayd]

You should have posted the website of his lecture notes. :)

Re:Obvously the server got hit with one of these..

[ace123]

What kind of server do they use? It's the strangest one I've ever seen.

According to netcraft, it is OS: Linux, Server: unknown, Last-changed: 21-Apr-2004, IP: 203.167.202.230, Netblock: CLEAR Net Wellington PoP RAS Pool #2

When I send it a simple HTTP GET request, it gives:

HTTP/1.0 200
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 84

<TITLE>Error </TITLE>
<BODY>
<H1>Error </H1>
FW-1 at wlg-fw01: Access denied.</BODY>

I've never seen this one before.

What is "FW-1" and "wlg-fw01"

Also, why is the status 200 [missing optional "OK" string] and not a 4xx error.

When i send it a HEAD request, it still gives me the body. In fact, when I send it a space and a few characters and 2 returns, it gives me the body, too, instead of a 500 Bad Request like it should.

WHY BOTHER?

[stratjakt]

OK, you know that some guys private webspace on his dsl connected linux server is going to be slashdotted within seconds.

So why not actually put SOMETHING in the submission that describes, in some way, WHAT THE SITE IS ABOUT?

"Check out what this crazy guy did with his computer!!!11!!!!11ROFLOL!"

It's an absolute waste of everyones time. Why even put shit like that on the front page?

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[merlin_jim]

OK, you know that some guys private webspace on his dsl connected linux server is going to be slashdotted within seconds.

So why not actually put SOMETHING in the submission that describes, in some way, WHAT THE SITE IS ABOUT?

Ironically, "Anonymous Coward" who posted this story left as his e-mail address "hddassaultcannon@hotmail.com"... So even though the submission is in the third person, it was obviously written by the guy that did this.

I mean come on, he had to have some kind of idea what would happen, right?

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[gregorsamsa11]

I agree, and I feel tortured after having the rare chance of posting a comment that would actually be read dangled before me then cruelly torn away. I'm beside myself with grief. I better call in sick. From class.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[stratjakt]

So what did he do?

Build a catapult or air cannon that fires hard drives?

Modify a hard drive to fire some sort of projectile?

Make a scale replica of a WWII era Howitzer using old hard drives?

Who knows?

It annoys me cuz this is the kind of geeky shit I actually like reading about and discussing. Who cares about the latest round of RIAA threats or MSFT hiring some goober? This could well be a neat lil project dude has going, but I'll never know.

When people submit something like this, why can't they submit a descriptive little write up, and why can't slashdot hold a jpeg or two in the story text?

And why can't editors just flat out refuse non-descript submissions like this, which consist of nothing more than a hyperlink to some guys little home server?

I mean, it's not hard to scope out a webserver and come to the conclusion that it's hosted on junk that isn't up to the task.

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:WHY BOTHER?

[jooon]

So why not actually put SOMETHING in the submission that describes, in some way, WHAT THE SITE IS ABOUT?

In the html that didn't finish loading I could see this: "50 pictures in 1 albums with 0 comments viewed 180 times".

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[Hieronymus Howard]

It traces back to paradise.net.nz who provide dialup, cable and adsl connections in New Zealand. He's probably diconnected by now, got a new ip address from DHCP and left dyndns pointing an his old address. I pity the unsuspecting person who is next allocated 202.0.40.113

HH

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[Tribbin]

Or the poster created an account for receiving mail about this story.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[DragonMagic]

Problem is that the site's on someone's dynamic connection, and it was submitted by the person whose site it is. Obviously this person was unaware of what a slashdotting does to a workstation.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[merlin_jim]

Yeah I thought about that... but it just didn't click. Why not have a generic email about anything anonymous email account. Having an email address for a particular story doesn't make sense... if it's a spam avoidance issue, why leave it unobfuscated on the front page of slashdot?

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[stratjakt]

Will google cache pictures, which apparently is all this site consisted of?

I still say let slashdot articles include a couple photos. Let the guy do a little write up, submit it along with a picture of his little drive cannon, or whatever it is, put a link at the end for people who want to see more.. Then everyone wins, except people trying to generate ad revenue from banners - the other half of slashdot submissions.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[torpor]

When people submit something like this, why can't they submit a descriptive little write up, and why can't slashdot hold a jpeg or two in the story text?

Because, it would appear in this case, nobody has a freakin' clue what 'nerd' means.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[gooberguy]

Who cares about the latest round of RIAA threats or MSFT hiring some goober?

I resent that!

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[dAzED1]

either the submitter didn't know, or he DID know and isn't actually the owner of said small server.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[argStyopa]

I'm amazed the mods let this through. I mean, they are obviously paying at least some attention, the manage to reject every one of MY p

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[goatpunch]

...it was obviously written by the guy that did this. I mean come on, he had to have some kind of idea what would happen, right?

I'm sure he knew exactly what could happen- maybe he feels like more of a complete geek now that he's been slashdotted. I'm sure his imaginary friends are impressed at any rate.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[grub]

It's the real address. In 8 weeks, when the traffic has died down, go to his site and you'll see that address on the website.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[HD Webdev]

Problem is that the site's on someone's dynamic connection, and it was submitted by the person whose site it is. Obviously this person was unaware of what a slashdotting does to a workstation.

He also didn't read his contract from the DSL provider. He doesn't have a static IP so there is a 'no servers' clause in that contract..

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[SamSim]

Perhaps the editors saw through all of this and let the story through just to teach the submitter - and would-be submitters like him - a lesson.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[Cecil]

Things like this are the reason I used to enjoy reading Slashdot. Now that they're mostly gone, I don't know why I still do. Glutton for punishment I guess.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[Frizzle Fry]

maybe he feels like more of a complete geek now that he's been slashdotted

Why does everybody assume the site was slashdotted? Based on the writeup, it seems much more likely that the server's hard drive was destroyed by a cannon of some kind.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[Cinquero]

Absolutely right. But I guess Google does not cache graphics... would be great if Google could work together with /. and cache the relevant pages including the pictures. If /. has a problem with creating caches, Google obviously hasn't.

Re:WHY BOTHER?

[Rogerborg]

Because Slashdot's 3 premium subscribers get a chance to see it, and everybody else views ads while venting their rage in a comment. Next question?

Sigh

[dolo666]

So now that our laptops are going to be classified as weapons, us Geeks are even closer to being chained to the desk, sadly enough. This is not funny, because I just chewed through my posie straps last week, and managed to roam the floor above me. Now that my laptop is a deadly weapon, I guess I should go re-tie those knots and just give up.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Technician]

Yep, Their cannon was no match for a slashdotting!

Yawn --slashdotted

[VC]

I can see all the cookie cutter jokes about being slashdotted already.

Let me see.
"must have used the webservers 2gb hdd"
"must have back fired"
"hard drives now replacing RAM disks"

etc...

Re:Yawn --slashdotted

[Rew190]

Yes, and of course the only thing more predictable about the cookie cutter jokes are the the cookie cutter posts forecasting the pending cookie cutter jokes.

Re:Yawn --slashdotted

[DrWhizBang]

or - in Soviet Russia, hard disk crashes you!!!

(I'm really sorry, I couldn't help myself :-)

Gone already...

[Vrallis]

Farked...erm...I mean Slashdotted...at only 4 comments.

Figures. Hopefully someone grabbed a mirror of it before we turned his hard drives into his next cannon fodder.

Re:Gone already...

[shystershep]

"Read"? Not at all. It just proves that we like to look at pictures of stuff flinging through the air violently, and if it's related to computers all the better. Imagine the bitching if it were a simple text-only "how-to" article.

Re:Gone already...

[pavon]

Farked...erm...I mean Slashdotted...at only 4 comments.

Actually, this site was already slashdotted before it even went live. I am a subscriber and couldn't even get to it. Maybe the guy has some sort of grudge against his ISP, posting a DSL hosted site like that. Or maybe he is a troll - posted just to see the bitching in the thread. Or perhaps he is just an attention starved fool, pretending to be submitting someone elses site when it is really his own.

Not already

[consolidatedbord]

Three posts in, and the site is already unresponsive. The cannon just got assaulted... slashdot style

Slashdotted - DYN-DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

kicks-ass.net is a free subdomain from dyndns.org - bet he's having some surfing issues right about now...

Re:Slashdotted - DYN-DNS

[Typoboy]

at least it makes it easier to disappear after the /. .. is this a new kind of DSL speed test?

Re:Slashdotted already?

[greenskyx]

kicks-ass.net is a domain one of the free dynamic DNS places use. It's probably hosted on someones DSL... :P

They're mad! MAD I tell you!

[imthatguy]

but on the other hand....with all the old obsolete machines around, world domination finally becomes a reality!

slashdotted

[t1nman33]

You may have a hard drive assault cannon, but your web server crumbles before the /. assault cannon!

kicks-ass.net?

[nukem1999]

Isn't that one of those free redirect services that people generally use to point to their cable/DSLed home machines? He's probably so slashdotted that he can't open slashdot to see that he's been slashdotted.

Re:kicks-ass.net?

[boisepunk]

well now it's a DDoS'd machine

Re:kicks-ass.net?

[mkettler]

so should they rename to hddcannon.ass-kicked.net?

But it is definitely an ADSL machine, woefuly under-prepared for a slashdotting.

Forward lookup of hddcannon.kicks-ass.net:
Host name: hddcannon.kicks-ass.net
IP address: 202.0.40.113
Alias(es): None

Reverse lookup of 202.0.40.113:

Host name: 202-0-40-113.adsl.paradise.net.nz
IP address: 202.0.40.113
Alias(es): None

Slashdotted Bad.

[Pirogoeth]

This site was already /.ed while it was still in the "Mysterious Future".

Whose turn was it to warn the linked sites today?

Re:Slashdotted Bad.

[curtisk]

no need to warn the linked site, since they soooooo very sneakily seemed to have submitted it themselves, so they knew it was coming

Re:Slashdotted Bad.

[bhtooefr]

The guy appears to have submitted himself, meaning that no warning was necessary.

BTW, I'm wondering if he realized how STUPID it was to get yourself /.ed, and yanked the Cat5e. Almost like Goatse-ing /., but without the gaping holes.

2 Gigs?

[diogenesx]

I can use 2 gig disks for my OpenBSD servers. However, I finally have a use for that stack of 200MB to 500MB Harddisks I've stashing like a packrat.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[potus98]

"Mommy, why did the RJ-45 face plate burst out of the wall in a show of sparks?"

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Shakrai]

kicks-ass.net is a domain one of the free dynamic DNS places use. It's probably hosted on someones DSL... :P

(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}:~#

Poor bastard. Wonder if New Zealand ISPs have hidden clauses in the AUP to axe your account if you use too much bandwidth?

It's too bad...

[CSArcticFox]

That I'm at school, because they filtered that website. *lol*

Re:It's too bad...

[shish]

Last time I checked, pretty much all the dyndns names were blocked (*.kicks-ass.net, *.mine.nu, *.dyndns.org, etc), so you can't get at any of the sites.

Slashdot is a better assault weapon

[192939495969798999]

All we have to do is drum up a story about someone where taking apart something, gluing a hub inside something, or anything tech-related where pictures are involved, then post said pictures on their site, and link the story from /. Crashola! Works every time. If only the HDD assault cannon was that accurate.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[brunson]

What are all the other New Zealanders doing while he's using the internet connection?

Makes you think....

[nickochee]

Either their site was really horrible, or we are just getting better at /.ing!

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Burianski11]

You mean it USED to be hosted on someone's DSL...

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Shakrai]

What are all the other New Zealanders doing while he's using the internet connection?

Hahahaha, that's wrong. Wrong, yet still funny :) I hear New Zeland's internet access is much improved since they upgraded the backbone to the v.92 standard.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want to know. It involves sheep and petroleum products.

If you want an effective killzone...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you will need a 7200RPM or greater drive.

Re:If you want an effective killzone...

[DrWhizBang]

and floppyies are useless, except maybe for target practice.

What the dyndns person should do after about

[Anonymous Coward]

5 minutes is remove the site and put a simple HTTP redirect to TubGirl ;)

Re:What the dyndns person should do after about

[insanechemist]

Tubgirl - I just had to find out...I just lost my appetite. My lunch is in the microwave, but I'm gonna throw it in the trash. Just when I thhought I'd seen some sickness, along came this.

Re:What the dyndns person should do after about

[bhtooefr]

I'm almost wondering if in the Mysterious Future he just pulled the plug on the server just to piss us off... People were saying he was /.ed in the MF... and he did just astroturf his own site...

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:What's the point of even clicking anymore?

[mostaphalles]

that's (checks picture for correctness) awesome :) I feel so enlightened

Alternate Site?

[Like2Byte]

Hrm, I went to http://hddcannon.ass-kicked.net/ and got the same result.

Reminds me of highschool

[secondsun]

This sounds about as fun as hard drive hockey was in the tech lab at my highschool. During the end of the year all the desks would be removed from the class room for floor maintenece. At the same time the old computers were being moved into storage to make space for the new ones. Combine that with a ready supply of screwdrivers and PVC piping and viola. You have Hard Drive hockey (which really played more like hard drive shuffle board but it was fun nontheless).

As soon as this guys DSL modem comes back from therapy I indend on looking this page up.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Hogwash McFly]

What are all the other New Zealanders doing while he's using the internet connection?

Working on Peter Jackson's The Hobbit

sick

[Tiro]

I think this is kind of sick.

After all I'm still using a laptop with a 1.2 GB disk. Precious disk space!

HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Anonymous Coward]

Could slashdot just add a link next to articles called "mirror" and pre-cache these smaller sites *before* they get hammered? I'm constantly scrolling through comments to find mirrors to slashdotted sites. Seems like a no-brainer. You could even do a 15-sec stress test on the site to determine it's ability to be directly linked.

Several times, i've seen sites that have had to shut down their site with a "please check back later" message. An inconvenience to us, but surely a REAL inconvenience to their normal viewers.

Thoughts? Thank you.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Shakrai]

I think the Slashdot FAQ talks about this and why it's a bad idea (content out of date, copyright issues, etc etc). Most sites would probably have a Google cache.

In this particular case it's the submitters fault for sending in a website hosted on a friggen DSL account -- and the editors fault for letting that submission get by them.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Typoboy]

If the editors checked to see that this was (a) dyndns to (b) a dsl account, they could have replied to the "AC" and asked them to host it somewhere else first.. (whatever "it" is)

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Syberghost]

A better fix would be to mark all astroturf submissions "denied".

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[CaptnMArk]

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

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[1u3hr]

Most sites would probably have a Google cache.

Mostly useless in stories like this (picture galleries) as the Google cache only caches the text -- the images are still referenced from the original site. The Wayback Machine is always worth trying, they do cache images (though not all) but they spider much less frequently.

and the editors fault for letting that submission get by them.

You say that as if they actually had a policy not to link to such sites. They don't. They don't bother to run submissions through a spellcheck, let alone see if the links are stable, or even exist at all.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Fastolfe]

The FAQ entry for this amounts to some handwaving and some vague points about how it might make people mad. Nevermind that HTTP defines how caching can/should work right in the basic protocol.

See my other response to a similar comment for details.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[azav]

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

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Scottarius]

why is it there is a post like this in every single story that gets slashdotted? I get tired of seeing this same discussion over and over and over again. Maybe slashdot should put a great big link at the top of the homepage that says "WHY WE DON'T MIRROR SITES" that links directly to the FAQ. I'm sure at least a few people would notice it...

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[DustMagnet]

A better fix would be to mark all astroturf submissions "denied".

Why mark them denied? When they could be DELETED!!.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[alatesystems]

BALEETED

Chris Benard
Above is the obligatory google bomb for myself.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[BillyBlaze]

Those problems could easily be overcome. Privately mirror the article, publish the story with the original link, email the webmaster. If he wants, publish the mirror and point the link in the article to it.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Wog]

Del Taco?

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[Cinquero]

Why not setting up a /.-Proxy? Accessible by everyone but only returning related websites' content.

Re:HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

[phaze3000]

The BitTorrent protocol is only really suitable for files larger than a few megs in size. It's not a good fit for web pages that are a few hundred k at most.

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.

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[mr_luc]

"I suppose one could also get a few bucks from the cast aluminum enclosures."

That will not be an option if you handle the disassembly process in the most enjoyable and viscerable way.

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[mr_luc]

Wtf was I thinking. VISCERABLE? Christ on a cracker . . .

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[Dun Malg]

Wtf was I thinking. VISCERABLE? Christ on a cracker . . .

It's a good word anyway. Even though it doesn't mean anything, it sounds like it should.

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[Azghoul]

I wonder what you could do with the magnets. Holding shit on your refridgerator?

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[Azghoul]

Refrigerator has a 'd' in it? NIIIIIIICE attempt at th English language, self...

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[DrWhizBang]

8" platters? Dude, you're so old-school!

a guy i work with has a clock built from an old 5" hdd, but you don't see the 8" ones too often...

Re:Weep for all the lost magnets

[svallarian]

Yeah, there great for putting up shit that you never, ever want to take off.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Mateito]

> "Mommy, why did the RJ-45 face plate burst out of the wall in a show of sparks?"

I just had an "Electric Dreams" Flashback moment.

But I feel better now.

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?

Good idea!

[Mr Z]

2. De-gauze with a powerful electro magnet.

Yes, you always want to remove the gauze from your hard-drive before destroying it. Otherwise, it might catch on fire during the melting step (#4). I'm sure Karl Freidrich appreciates the hint.

--Joe

Dumb ass...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Fark is not a word, never was, never will be... Farscape was a TV show, not "reality", and blah blah blah...

See: www.fark.com and understand.

Re:It's not slashdotted...

[Shakrai]

Yeah they either shut off their webserver or they got kicked off that IP address due to the flood and some other poor bastard was assigned it. If this is the case then I really pity that guy.

(109):tim@pigeon:{11:49}:~# telnet 202.0.40.113 80
Trying 202.0.40.113...
telnet: connect to address 202.0.40.113: Connection refused
(110):tim@pigeon:{11:49}:~#

Again I say this was a publicity stunt (look at the e-mail address from the "Anonymous Coward" that submitted the article). Guess it's a slow news day and we need something to occupy our time with -- (Deity) knows we wouldn't be actually working on company time now would we? ;) (myself as guilty as the rest of you)

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Vrallis]

Eric_Cartman_South_P is right, SuperBanana. It was a half-joking reference to Fark.com, which I read regularly (I've read Slashdot regularly far longer than Fark, though.) The Fark.com equivalent of a Slashdotting is a Farking. /hates explaining jokes to morons....

dumbass.

[No-op]

he was referring to a common phrase used on FARK, in which a link gets destroyed due to all the traffic going to it. this is commonly referred to as "being farked", akin to something "being slashdotted".

what really creeps me out is that not only do you have some weird science fiction meaning for that word, but it's a pet peeve of yours...

Re:dumbass.

[cloudmaster]

That's the most awesome part - that some guy actually gets irritated when he thinks someone else is copying from a horrible show. Like everyone watches "Farscape", and everyone likes it *sooo* much that they'd start using made-up words from said show.

Tacos. Burning Tacos. I need a .sig that mentions burning Tacos somehow... Yeah.

Re:dumbass.

[Vaevictis666]

Personally, I think the penny-arcade guys have a better term than either. If a link off of PA brings your site down, you have just been Wanged.

Re:dumbass.

[hayek]

Seriously, a good farking embiggens a webserver's ego. It is a perfectly cromulent word.

3F13

Re:dumbass.

[CrackHappy]

So that brings up an interesting question.

If a site is featured on /., Fark, Drudge, Howard Stern or any other popular geek hangout, and they al l do it at the same time, when the site in question is taken down, what term should be used? SlashFarkudge?

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[cowens]

Um, I think the word you are thinking if is frell not fark. www.fark.com is a news/link farm site like Slashdot.

Slashdot Koan

[Paulrothrock]

If a site is Slashdotted before you have a chance to see it, does it even exist?

Re:Slashdot Koan

[Maljin Jolt]

If a site is Slashdotted before you have a chance to see it, does it even exist?

Mu!

Re:Slashdot Koan

[shish]

It did exist, but not any more :/

Re:Slashdot Koan

[aberant]

ROFL! nice one!.. are we the only nerds that read koans?

Re:Slashdot Koan

[SamSim]

Then there was the story which was mysteriously Slashdotted before even the first user read it.

Only the beginning!

[StefanJ]

In the near future we can look forward to:

• 8MB USB memory stick squad support weapon
• 300 baud modem area denial munition (land mine)
• 12" CGA Monitor implosion bomb
• Utility tool with sharpened 256kb SIMM blades

Re:IE Can Connect!!!!

[Tribbin]

Mod parent up [+1 funny]

Ouch

[ae-valkyre]

Slashdotters are ruthless. :P

What's really amusing...

[Pvt_Waldo]

Is that not one post has been mod'ed up about the actual project - just the /. effect ;^)

Re:What's really amusing...

[t_allardyce]

I don't think anyone has actually seen the project to comment about it, i dont even know how the weapon works!?

Re:What's really amusing...

[PrintError]

Probably because it was /.'d before anyone actually saw it!!!

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Tackhead]

> > Farked.
>
> Okay, this is a serious pet peeve. Fark is not a word, never was, never will be, STOP USING IT unless you want to be placed in the same category as lusers who make the Vulcan "V" sign.
>
>Farscape was a TV show, not "reality", and the only reason the word was "invented" was because Scifi didn't want the rating level increase that would come with characters actually properly swearing. If you're gonna swear, swear properly.

Obvious: It's not news, IT'S FARKDOT!

Amusing: Drew sues Farscape producers. Claims trademark infringement. Hilarity ensues.

Unlikely: Geek submits Slashdot article about own website hosted on DSL and expects web server to remain unfarked long enough for someone to get a mirror.

Photoshop: Theme - an HDD assault cannon, a web server, a guy who doesn't know what Fark means. Difficulty - no Baby Head on Darl McBride's body.

imagine...

[larrylemur]

A beowulf cluster of these! Mwah hah hah hah!

Yep

[Sycraft-fu]

Normally, I have nothing but sympathy for people like that. I run servers on my DSL too and dread getting linked by ./. I defend against this by having nothing interesting on my servers :)

However this guy I have NO sympathy for since the e-mail address strongly suggests that the person that made it was the one that submitted it. That qualifies as a Grade-A bonehead move if you asked me. I mean sure, maybe not everyone realises the full impace of a ./ing but if you read the site enough to submit something, you ought to have an idea that 256k isn't going to cut it for serving up lots of pictures and videos.

Re:Yep

[bhtooefr]

That's why when my site was up I had a notice saying that if you were going to /. me, you had better tell me about it. I wasn't going to Goatse or Tubgirl them, but I WOULD put a notice up, and send you to a mirror.

Re:Yep

[Jade E. 2]

It did get slashdotted once back before you took over, remember, the ATA copy protection thing? And Russ submitted it himself. I don't remember if it held up under the load or not, though...

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[damiangerous]

You're aware there's a popular website called fark, right? And this website is similar to slashdot in that it posts links to news articles and carries associated commentary? You're also aware that the rush of traffic from a newly posted link can wreak havoc on an unsuspecting website, much like slashdot? You're aware that the readers of fark refer to this effect as a "farking" or that a site that has been "farked", much like slashdot readers refer to a slashdotting and slashdotted? Your "pet peeve" is seriously misplaced.

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

[Inuchance]

Yeah, just use the components from a different RC car. ;)

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.

For those who wonder why no/. cache...

[ferralis]

I did too... so I hit the faq, and discovered that this has been discussed at least for the last 4 years...

It's not out of small-mindedness or forgetfulness after all. Hrm... maybe we should cut the editors a small break once in a while? Nah, 'twould spoil the fun! :)

O'course, why a google cache couldn't be erected is another story...

Re:For those who wonder why no/. cache...

[cybermace5]

Quote from that: "So the quick answer is: 'Sure, caching would be neat.' It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented."

We all know that thinking something through in great detail definitely puts it off-limits to Slashdot!

Seriously, small sites like this are NOT going to get mad if you cache them temporarily. Probably most smaller commercial sites, too. And if they change the site during the slashdotting and get uptight about the cache not being updated, then they can send an updated version, or else Slashdot could check periodically.

But yeah, the "having to think about it" part is probably the biggest obstacle.

Re:For those who wonder why no/. cache...

[AmericanInKiev]

To make everyone happy - Slashdot could (whilst generating a page - look to see if its own copy
of m_LastTimePageWasChecked(url) is greater than 10 minutes and if so then test the server to see if it is slashdotted and update cache if at all possible. Otherwise see if m_PageIsSlashdotted(url) is true, and if it is then:

1. increment the m_PublishedCopyCounter(url)
2. serve the cache

for a period of time thereafter tranfer the hitcount of the cache to the target site by sending request some number of times n where n is equal to m_PublishedCopyCounter(url).

This will effectively loadbalance the target site - credit the site with all hits if possible (with an optout page and a statistics page for small sites who can't afford the bandwidth and may never recover)

AIK

Re:For those who wonder why no/. cache...

[cybermace5]

EXACTLY...allow the site to host AS MANY HITS AS IT COULD ANYWAY. Then how can anyone complain if they don't get ad revenue for every Slashdot cache access? They could never have served that many impressions on their own, anyway.

Rob Malda's excuse is looking pretty lame now.

Re:For those who wonder why no/. cache...

[Fastolfe]

Seriously, small sites like this are NOT going to get mad if you cache them temporarily.

Further, no one has the right to get mad so long as your cache obeys HTTP caching rules. If their site expresses a cache-control header indicating the page can be considered fresh for an hour, and Slashdot is sent through such a cache (a proxy with a mirror-like front-end), your site will see one hit an hour for the duration of the Slashdotting.

If the site expresses an unwillingness to be cached (such as a "no-cache" header), then the site owner deserves the Slashdotting he gets. Otherwise, why not take advantage of the caching rules HTTP defines? There's no rule that says your caching HTTP proxy can't expose its cached content through its own separate URI. It just has to play by the rules with respects to the HTTP caching policies expressed by the origin server.

Seriously, this is something that can be set up in 5 minutes with anyone moderately familiar with Apache, mod_cache and mod_proxy. A bit of evangelism would then be needed to ensure about-to-be-hit sites are using clueful caching headers (which they should be anyway). Otherwise there's no point.

Priceless!

[RLW]

This person knows now!

Re:Slashdotted? How about Cachedotted?

[gevmage]

I believe there are are sites that are designed to cope with this type of thing. The guy that designed the TRON costume at Penguicon has his site at home on a DSL, but copied the site to ibiblio before submitting to slashdot.

Is there any Linux on...

[AchilleTalon]

these HDDs? I'm seeking for a reason to resign as president of my local LUG...

Re:Slashdot effect used for evil?

[Dmala]

What if this was an intentional DDOS attack? Someone you don't like runs a dinky little webserver off his DSL account, with some vaguely /. appropriate material. Submit his site, it gets on the front page, and BOOM... instant DOS.

Dammit, where's my tinfoil hat??

Plan for world conquest

[Teahouse]

Detailed plan for world domination:

1. Build Hard Drive Assault Cannon

2. ?????

3. World Domination!

My God! It's so simple, it's brilliant!

MIRROR*

[bhtooefr]

Imagine the bitching if it were a simple text-only "how-to" article.

Hard Drive Assault Cannon HOWTO

1 Introduction

This HOWTO aims to show how to manufacture a hard drive assault cannon.

2 Materials

You will need:

* One (1) or more hard drives, preferrably 3.5", and of unusably small capacity
* One (1) 4.50" ID PVC pipe, length must be at least one foot
* One (1) explosive device, any form
* Materials for explosive device to PVC pipe interface

3 Assembly

Somehow attach the PVC pipe to the explosive device in such a manner that most of the force enters the PVC pipe. Insert the hard drive into the PVC pipe.

4 Usage

Detonate the explosive device. The hard drive should exit the pipe, and move through the air. To use again, the cannon must be reassembled (as per step 3).

*Note: This isn't a real mirror, do not assume this is actually the mirror.

Re:MIRROR*

[bhtooefr]

BTW, before anyone says to bitchslap mods for giving me informative when they MUST have meant funny, look at the /. FAQ, which says that Funny doesn't give you karma. BTW, mods, go ahead and mod it funny - I've got (estimated) Karma 50.

Re:MIRROR*

[dot-magnon]

Where's that in DocBook? :)

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Neophytus]

It wouldn't be valid if it were hidden.

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Analogy Man]

The whole purpose of an expletive is supposedly to shock or convey emotion. FARK appears to have worked on you. If I said RATZFILIM every time I was REALLY mad, my kids would get the idea and know they were in deep trouble.

Language is a dynamic thing...which is why there are revisions to dictionaries.

Ponder this as you sit on your davenport, put a 78 on the phonograph and listen to your favorite Bing Crosby number.

Another day, another bandwidth article

[DR SoB]

How many articles are going to be posted about the slashdotting effect? What's that? This wasn't about the slashdotting effect? Then WHAT'S WITH ALL THE COMMENTS??!?!!

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[joebok]

It isn't? Feldercarb!!

Re:Slashdotted already?

[DHR]

It's worse than that, they charge you for the extra bandwidth, up to 20 cents per international MB.

http://www2.paradise.net.nz/plans/highspeed.html

Guy probably pulled the plug on his line once he did the math and realized maybe it wasn't such a good idea to post himself on /.

I call grammar-Goodwin!

[Thud457]

Whoa , that grammar-NAZI is sure giving you woe for your poor use of grammar!!!

heed the .sig...

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[BlackHawk-666]

Bah, language nazis are the worst kind of bores. If new words weren't able to be added to the english language then we would be missing nearly every word in the farking dictionary. Here's how it works. Somebody starts to use a cool sounding term e.g. grok, other people grok the term (see what I did there?) and it becomes a part of slang. After being slang for a while it becomes common enough to warrant adding to the official dictionaries. They just added a bunch of new words last year IIRC, and they will add more in the future.

I can only pray that wild gangs of wolfbaggers come and drag these language nazis off to their lairs for some serious donkey punching.

Better way

[Anonymous Coward]

Just stop posting all these lame, trollish articles. Don't worry slashdot, we'll keep reloading even with just 3 quality articles per day. At least that way the 3 good articles won't scroll off the main page and we can have even higher quality discussions on them.

If you're still compelled to post these simplistic tidbits, bring back the Quickies. I miss those!

Sig Link?

[sepluv]

Never mind where the magnet is*, where's the parent's .sig link (explaining what these projects are)?

*although tell me anyway. I just bought a 160 GB external USB2/Firewire HDD, so I guess I can sacrifice Bilbo** (my old Seagate >100MB drive) for dissection (muhehawwwww)--well I'll probably wait until it starts to develop bad sectors or sthg 'cause storage is storage after all--need as many hard dic^Hsks as I can get^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W. Hmmm...good job I can use the ctrl-h to get rid of Freudian slips....

**yes, my HDD's have names 8=:-)--Bilbo for Stryder (my old i486DX machine), and Marvin (my new PIII Coppermine 800MHz) has two HDD's called Slartibardfast and Zaphod--makes sense to me. I don't know what I'll call the new one. Suggestions here if you want...

Re:Sig Link?

[sepluv]

OK. Doh! Ignore me--I'm usually already logged in, so I did not realise that .sigs where suppressed whe reading AC.

Re:Sig Link?

[bhtooefr]

Strider and Slartibartfast.

BTW, if it's in the P3, call it Prosser or something...

Re:Sig Link?

[sepluv]

I stand corrected--I haven't read the book versions of either works (H2G2, LotR) recently.

Ye, I probably will--Prosser isn't used and is as good as any.

Even more off-topic but very funny:
I, incidentally, have been involved in a dispute with the town clerk of my local town council, a Mr. Prosser, over various sets of light-polluting floodlighting which the town council erected without planning permission and which shine up into the sky and onto the side of two mountains (and are no doubt partly responsible for the ever-increasing and massive cost of town-council tax in my town). The areas they shine on are also internationally-protected wildife habitats (SSSI's, SAC's, AONB's, SPA's, &c) and nesting birds are kept awake by the lighting. Said Mr. Prosser told me, when asked what the purpose of the lights were, something like "well...they're lighting aren't they...decorative lighting...what do you mean purpose?...you've got to put up decorative lighting" (s/lighting/bypass ;-)). You couldn't make it up...

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[blincoln]

Okay, this is a serious pet peeve. Fark is not a word, never was, never will be, STOP USING IT unless you want to be placed in the same category as lusers who make the Vulcan "V" sign.

Farscape was a TV show, not "reality", and the only reason the word was "invented" was because Scifi didn't want the rating level increase that would come with characters actually properly swearing. If you're gonna swear, swear properly.

You know, SuperBanana, there are plenty of decaffeinated brands that are just as tasty as the real thing.

Re:Slashdotted already?Live Relay

[Anonymous Coward]

ok blokes, i jumped in the old bomb and motored over to yack with these foolz with the catapult.(I reside in the next big smoke over)

i'm standing here in the doorway now. luck for me my wireless is still running fulltit.

after some quick g'days being exchanged, these guys are going to show me how this thing works (yes their DSL connection has gone tits'up).

[mates, what you doing there? that looks a whee bit dangerous...oh that's clever using the chilly bin for cooling, the whole mess looks a bit stroppy...]

i'll keep relaying for you Slashdot blokes, since their net link has gone bush.

[uh blokes, not sure you should be doing...FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!! don't...] ...Slashdotters, I can't describe....wait

There's this bright $&%^#&fq9q1 1q91qwei and som238 dodgy metallicj 11(#%(*& for t28 love of god, don'1*31#(@#

[NO CARRIER]

Re:Slashdotted? How about Cachedotted?

[IceAgeComing]

The Slashdot FAQ is an interesting read.

I recommend it to all those reading this post, especially those who moderated this post as Insightful.

Re:MIRROR

[bhtooefr]

WTF? The image gallery has some... images (not Goatse or anything, but...)

BTW, if you want to PROPERLY troll Opera users, you might want to push your navigation links under the navigation bar...

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[monkeyfinger]

Okay, this is a serious pet peeve. Fark is not a word, never was, never will be, STOP USING IT unless you want to be placed in the same category as lusers who make the Vulcan "V" sign.

Luser is not a word, never was, never will be, STOP USING IT unless.....etc...etc..

Re:hm

[Pahalial]

Modded funny maybe, but that's actually quite a point. /. as a DDOS attack... aren't we the ones who look down on all the zombie infected machines? What's the difference?

Boltzman.

[sshtome]

Actually it both exists and doesn't exits,

It's only when the wave function breaks down that the address of a slashdotted article defined.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, man, be realistic.

Everyone knows they have one of those cool 2-in-1 PCI shotgunned v.90 112k modems.

Blazing, I tells ya, from Christchurch to Wellington.

- DRFSR

The question

[xutopia]

does his HDD cannon still work while his computer is /.ed?

Re:Slashdotted already?

[bhtooefr]

(just reading this site, I have NO idea what I'm talking about, being in the US)

That only applies to JetStart. He might have JetStream, which is $20+Telecom fees. Here's the rate schedule for JetStream on the Telecom end:
http://www.telecom.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203071-2 02534, 00.html

2G webmail

[lordrich]

The other option would be to offer a webmail account with 2Gb storage. It would be more newsworthy than this article - even if it would be for only one person.

What was it?

[Blitzenn]

In light of the site being removed, can someone take a moment and tell us what it was?

Re:What was it?

[Blitzenn]

Thank you! I was not able to see it and no one else took the time to say what it was. A bunch of us were in the 'slashdark'

WTF happened to this thread?

[MadBurner]

from slashdotting to farking frelling to what the Fuck? You all need to look at some porn or something. I still want to see the damn cannon.

It would be much cooler if ...

[zangdesign]

they had taken one of those robotic arm storage systems and used it to conquer a planet. Now THAT'S a misuse of techology!

We already have an HDD assault cannon...

[Feanturi]

It's called Slashdot, and it worked again. ;)

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[DrWhizBang]

Only lusers object to the use of the word "luser". And only lusers user the word "luser". Ah, wait, I take that last part back.

Ah, fark!

Plagiarism

[fluxrad]

That is sooooo about to become my new sig.

Re:Plagiarism

[Paulrothrock]

Feel free to .sig it. *checks off 'get sigged on /.' on To-Do list*

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[princewally]

You spelled it wrong. It's (l)user. The L is always there, but silent. It is also, as a courtesy, generally dropped from written communications, when said communications are directed to the (l)users.

Re:You have it easy!

[bhtooefr]

Didn't they have docking stations?

Yep: http://www.lowendmac.com/pb/210.shtml

Also, I think those old Macs used internal SCSI drives - you might want to try getting something from a newer Apple laptop.

Re:Slashdotted? How about Cachedotted?

[Fastolfe]

I've read the FAQ and I don't buy it. I believe it's mainly laziness preventing the implementation of some caching layer here, combined with the cost of bandwidth they'd normally be able to shovel in the direction of the site the article is talking about.

So long as the cache/mirror honors HTTP caching headers, there's no true problem caching the information. Banner ads are usually served without caching headers (or with a must-revalidate header) to trigger a hit to the origin server, so they get credit for the impression. Real content usually (if the admin is clueful) expresses caching headers indicating the page can be held on to for a longer period of time. If the author is paranoid about people seeing his updates, a max-age of 1 minute or even 10 seconds would still spare his site from being slashdotted. If a good slashdotting results in, say, 100 hits per second, that's at least 1000 hits to the cache/proxy for every one hit the cache/proxy makes to his server. Not a bad reduction.

Of course, sites are always free to say "don't cache this page!" in HTTP, preventing any sort of proxy or cache from "legally" caching the page even for a short duration. If they're being dumb like that, though, they deserve the slashdotting they get.

BAH - Puny Human WebSite

[Hulkster]

Hulk say hard drive story must be hosted on Puny Human Web Site.
Hulk try to look at pictures - site not respond.
Hulk get angry - Hulk SMASH Puny Human web site.

Hulk say more fun is watching Hulk jump off a house.
Hulk use hulk'in web server.

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.

Re:Disposal is much more fun in an emergency

[jnik]

If we were in danger of being overrun by the enemy..., 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.

Gee, they expected you to have quite a bit of warning before being overrun, eh? "Hmmm, the enemy might be here in eight hours or so. Better get started." (six hours pass) "Okay, all done--wait, they got turned back?"

Re:Disposal is much more fun in an emergency

[Pope]

Hmm, you'd think that they would create some sort of laundy chute-like corridor where you could throw everything so that it collected together, then take the sledges + thermite to it.

Re:Disposal is much more fun in an emergency

[srmalloy]

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.

I remember, years ago at work, running across a reference to and picture of a document-destruction device that was supposed to have been phased out; it was essentially a plate of thermite that would have sat on top of a file cabinet. To destroy the documents in the file cabinet, you pulled a pair of rings on wires out of the upper surface, which set off a fuse (allowing you to get away) that ignited the thermite, which would burn down through the file cabinet, destroying the documents inside. Something like that must have been really impressive to watch, judging from the demonstrations with a few grams of thermite that I watched in high-school chemistry.

Re:MIRROR

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick reply so I don't get modslammed hard...

This was a comment in reply to a troll comment, telling everyone that it's a troll and to not bother, and that the troll needed to fix his site.

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:Sneaky denial of service attack.

[ianbnet]

friggin' sneaky. conspiracy theories, now's your chance to shine.

personally, i subscribe to this, and that would be funny as hell

not a cannon, but .....

[bigkahunafish]

I've made some lower tech weapons from computer components that can be quite useful. One is a PC2100 DDR RAM buoy knife I have it on my blog. But please dont /. me! (ha!) Pics

Re:not a cannon, but .....

[bigkahunafish]

sorry, everything went crazy, and it went down...

apologies

Waste of perfectly useful hd's.

[DoraLives]

I cobble computers together from giveaway parts and 2gig hd's are PERFECT for putting into FREE machines to give to folks as their first computer (yep, there's still great shoals of people out there who have yet to take the FIRST step).

Sigh...

Mine is twice as good

[chiph]

My hard drive cannon is twice as good because I use 4gb drives.

None of those wimpy IDE drives, either -- I use Ultra-Wide SCSI drives (the extra circuitry makes them fly further).

Chip H.
(isn't one-upsmanship fun?)

back up, but not terribly stable

[bigkahunafish]

the link in parent is up, pictures are not all that stable; they may work and may not. you may have to hit show picture a few times if they dont immediately work, but if not, sorry, you can always email me and i can send them if you are DYING to see it!

OT: Security!?

[Alioth]

OT, but I note you ran all this as root (or at least the # prompt indicates the logged in user has root privileges).

It is generally best practise to only do things as root that need to be done as root. Things like running 'host' don't - so as good security practise, you should have done this as a non-root user!

Re:OT: Security!?

[Shakrai]

It is generally best practise to only do things as root that need to be done as root. Things like running 'host' don't - so as good security practise, you should have done this as a non-root user!

Actually that is generally good practice but I already had a root console open for a kernel upgrade and I didn't see the point of su'ing or logging into a non-root user to run something as simple as host.

Of course the point is valid but I'd worry about it more with running things like IRC clients or what have you then I would with running DNS lookups or whois commands.

A suggestion...

[Civil_Disobedient]

Ironically, "Anonymous Coward" who posted this story left as his e-mail address "hddassaultcannon@hotmail.com"

I suggest we all email him about sending us some sample pictures of whatever the hell he was talking about.

Ideally, three or four times a day.

Asshat.

Re:A suggestion...

[kd5ujz]

How is he going to get the email? the link from Au. to NZ. has been on fire all day. They are on the phone with USR and Boca as we speak.

Re:Slashdotted? How about Cachedotted?

[Anonymous Custard]

From the faq linked above:

Slashdot should cache pages to prevent the Slashdot Effect!

Sure, it's a great idea, but it has a lot of implications. For example, commercial sites rely on their banner ads to generate revenue. If I cache one of their pages, this will mess with their statistics, and mess with their banner ads. In other words, this will piss them off.

Of course, most of the time, the commercial sites that actually have income from banner ads easily withstand the Slashdot Effect. So perhaps we could draw the line at sites that don't have ads. They are, after all, much more likely to buckle under the pressure of all those unexpected hits. But what happens if I cache the site, and they update themselves? Once again, I'm transmitting data that I shouldn't be, only this time my cache is out of date!

I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?

So the quick answer is: "Sure, caching would be neat." It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.

Ad-supported: no cache.
Non ad-supported: cache, but only forward user to cache when server is slashdotted. Cache is cleared once the article leaves the front page. What is on the "slashdot front page" is defined by the default settings.

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Cyclometh]

Dumbass: Slashdot poster thinks Fark is a curse word on Farscape. Humiliation ensues.

Don't you mean...

[Inuchance]

A RAID array?

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Cyclometh]

*snort* You came *this close* (holds up fingers about a millimeter apart) to owing me a new keyboard due to Vanilla Coke spewage.

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Shawn Parr]

Uh, I think you are thinking of Frell, not Fark.

Frelling people that don't pay attention to fantasy swear replacements. . .

Howard Stern can do this, too.

[BattyMan]

ANY website he mentions on the air disappears instantly.
It's almost magical.

I guess that would be called "Sterning"?

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Zeriel]

Imagine a house where RJ-11 comes in to the DSL router in the basement, which goes out to a switch, which goes to a patch panel, which goes to the house's wiring, which goes to a RJ-45 faceplate. ...Dipshit.

Office filters

[cmpalmer]

I wouldn't know whether it was slashdotted or not, my company's web filter blocked it as "porn"

Slashdot DOS

[jhamm]

This guy's using Slashdot to DOS a rival 733t tribe member's PC. It's easy. Make up a title intriguing to geeks and post it anonymously on Slashdot.

What a waste!

[troon]

I run three web sites off an old P100 with two old 1GB drives as the main storage in RAID-1 configuration.

I hate it when people waste old hardware that could go to good use!

even worse

[ChartBoy]

202-0-40-113.adsl.paradise.net.nz

Even worse, we just /.'d New Zealand.

OOh OOh I got this one

[darllikesdong]

Maybe they were running their webserver on one of the HDs they launched!

Maybe its part of a plan

[frAme57]

Maybe this HDD cannon is some lame idea that normally would not have shown up here. But maybe the guy behind the site annoyed timothy enough (d3wd, p0st m4 5it3 - it r0x0r5!!) that he decided to unleash a horde of geeks on the web server to teach the dork a lesson in humility.

Behold the power of bored people with 'net connections!

Maybe I'm Confused...

[virg_mattes]

Maybe I'm just confused, but I thought the Underpants Gnome's list was:

1.) Steal Underpants.
2.) ???
3.) Profit!

Am I still the only one who sees that the obvious entry for number 2 is:

2.) Sell them to old Japanese guys out of vending machines.

Why is this so tough? It's not even illegal, apparently.

Virg

Re:Maybe I'm Confused...

[G-funk]

Actually, in a lot of cities in japan (and growing), it is illegal.

Re:That would be Karl Friedrich

[Beardydog]

Do you pronounce it Fro-drich?

Hey, the 2nd person called.

[Ayanami Rei]

He wants to know where he can find an example of himself. I figured you might know.

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[scdeimos]

Luser is not a word, never was, never will be, STOP USING IT...

Of course, that why lusrmgr.msc doesn't ship with Win2K and later. :)

Re:FARK IS NOT A WORD

[Psykechan]

What the fark is your problem?

Re:Slashdotted already?

[potus98]

Not everywhere dipshit. I have DSL with no modem, no in-home router, no h/w supplied by phone co. We live in a new subdivision that I think has fiber (don't know if that's relavent). But basically, the guy played with some wires in the outside plastic box on the side of my house, swapped out my RJ-11 faceplate jack with a 2-socket RJ-45 and RJ-11 jack. The RJ-11 is phone of course, and the RJ-45 goes right into my firewall. An actual, plain-old firewall, not a DSL combo box unit.

Does the DSL come over the phone lines? In most cases, yes. Does that imply that it must term at an RJ-11 jack? No.

A possible drawback is that I must use that RJ-45 -I cannot move to other jacks in my house. But thanks to wireless, who cares?

Despite your dipshitedness, I agree with the second comment: +5 funny on my original post is lame.

Fark is a website

[shadow_slicer]

I think Fark would disagree.

FYI: Fark is yet another news site, with powers that possibly rival even the slashdot effect.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Psyrg]

Yeah thats absolutely correct. New Zealanders shag sheep, all day every day.

From the age of sixteen, every boy is given a small flock of ewes and is told to shag them senseless until they are ready for the meat works. Its then packaged sent over to the US.

Think about that next time you've got gravy dribbling down your chin. :)

Stolen from Mike King's stand up comedy.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[MobileC]

"Poor bastard. Wonder if New Zealand ISPs have hidden clauses in the AUP to axe your account if you use too much bandwidth?"

Most ADSL plans are 10c US per Meg over cap.
The cap is usually somewhere between 500mb and 5Gb or less.

Re:Slashdotted already?

[Trogre]

Most DSL providers in NZ (except for some, on very new plans) have a cap of around 3GB/month, and charge for every subsequent megabyte.

When mum & dad get the phone bill, he'd better make himself scarce.

The Real Rules

[Nintendork]

If it doesn't contain top secret information, you can use programs to sanitize the disk. Otherwise, you have to destroy the disk using one method. Here's the rulebook.

-Lucas

Re:And in Your Case...

[RedCard]

NO, stupid. It is not a misspelling of "their" as "their" and "there" are both properly spelled there. The problem is that they missused their words by confusing two homophones. As an English, History AND Computer Geek, I look down on you, AC.

I hereby decree that from now on all instances of the word in question will be spelt as "Thare".
That ought to clear things up considerably.

thanks a lot guys....

[TractorCow]

OMG! So that's why my ISP (I'm on a paradise.net.nz ADSL connection) has been reeking of dialup lately.

I'd like to thank that website for disconnecting me in the middle of many online games, which has been occuring a lot lately. =/

Take a chill pill, he's not even root anyway

[Z-MaxX]

Sure, '#' usually means root, but this guy's prompt says "(104):tim@pigeon:{11:45}:~#". That looks like a custom prompt if I've ever seen one (you too can set the PS1 variable). Looks like the prompt tells us: 104 commands on the history stack, the user is tim (not root!!), the host is pigeon, current time 11:45, current directory is tim's home directory. The '#' is probably just his favorite prompt character.

Then Slashdot would have to shut down on principle

[iamcf13]

A better fix would be to mark all astroturf submissions "denied".

Then Slashdot would have to shut down on principle....

astroturf/free ad: 100GB, 9.5mm thick HD from Toshiba

astroturf/free ad: VIA Announces Lead-Free Motherboard

astroturf/free ad: Delorean Time Machine Replica Up For Auction

astroturf/free ad: DSPAM v2.10 Released

iamcf13's Recent Submissions
Title Datestamp
Entertainment news: Jack Valenti retires (& expensive 9-figure movies) Thursday March 25, @12:10PM Rejected
astroturf/free ad: A bold, new approach to fighting spam.... Thursday March 11, @11:51PM Rejected

Toshiba got free advertising on Slashdot.

VIA got free advertising on Slashdot.

The person selling the BTTF Delorean Time Machine Replica got free advertising on Slashdot.

The DSPAM creator(s) got free advertising on Slashdot.

Jack Valenti retires!
Sounded like news to me so I pass the URL on to Slashdot.
Rejected.

Hey everybody, I wrote 'the mother of all email spam filters' after months of research, thought, and programming.
I pass the URL on to Slashdot so others can know about it.
Rejected.

It would appear Slashdot's editorial policy is inconsistent....

What does it take to get a story on Slashdot?

I submitted a genuine, non-astroturf story about outgoing MPAA president Jack Valenti and expensive Hollywood movies and got rejected. Can't be a bandwith issue--surely Slashdot cannot slashdot the BBC's website, can they? So then why was this story rejected after I (haphazardly) summarized it (along with some parting thoughts) rather than simply give them a sentence or two along with the URL?

My retail software product is, at face value no different from the other items for sale mentioned above. Why the apparent bias that appears to favor big companies or 'big ticket items' offered for sale by private citizens?

Then there's DSPAM and CF13, two email spam filters.

One is open source.

The other is closed source but open algorithm. There is enough information available at the CF13 homepage for a knowledgeable programmer to write their own version of CF13 if they wanted to. In fact, I took GREAT PAINS to make sure the algorithms used by CF13 wouldn't wind up patented and out of play for the next twenty years!

Doesn't that sound like something newsworthy?

Does Slashdot's editorial policy boil down to:

If there is money involved, size matters. If not, it has to be free and open source.

If it does, it should be changed for the better to something more impartial than what is in place now....

thank you.

[No-op]

I'm glad I wasn't alone on that one. I couldn't stop thinking about how absolutely asinine that was, and it made me wonder what kind of dungeons-and-dragons-loving, everquest-playing, "star-trek-next-generation-isn't-the-real-thing" mother's basement world the poster lived in.

it took me a minute to get he was ranting about a tv show, which I guess makes me feel safely comfortable about my sci-fi geek level.

Re:Slashdotted? How about Cachedotted?

[lysium]

It may be the FAQ's stated policy, but "Not My Responsibility" is not really the neighborly response. The policy is quite inconsiderate, though, and it has been personally stated by editors with an attitude that I classify as "bordering on arrogant." IMHO.

If enough Moderators made the parent post Insightful, maybe then its actually a Valid Point, regardless of any Official Decrees from Authority Figures?

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