Slashdot Mirror
Network-Monitoring Data Put to Music
StrongGlad writes "Building on the idea that people are naturally attuned to sound, the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has created software that translates network and server activity into music. And, their IT department operators can interpret the music to detect problems in the system." Talk about finding the beauty in Spam. From the article: "Last Friday, IT department operators began listening to what sounds like classical music but is actually a precise audio model of system metrics. They are trained to recognize instruments, chords, tempo and other musical elements of music as a translation of e-mail activity from 15 servers over three subnets. Every aspect of the music correlates to information. Probes detect server activity and send about 20 summaries a second to the iSIC sound engine. The data is aggregated and transformed into an audio format."
He's a loser Marge, dump him! :sings: I travelled the world and the seven seas, I am watching you through a camera!
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
I swear I remember reading about something like this years ago but for the life of me, I haven't been able to find it mentioned anywhere.
Although it wasn't email / spam related, the system I'm thinking of used jungle sounds (birds, rivers etc.) but had things like lion roars when the firewall detected a hack attempt.
Am I just dreaming this, or can someone give me any more information?
It sounds kind of hokey, but it probably works very well, certainly better than looking at a bunch of hex. This probably depends on what you're using to monitor your traffic. After all, the best morse code transcribers do 250 wpm.
I hate sigs.
Just what does a slashdotting sound like?
It wasn't bad enough that my cube-mate eats cereal by the handful from the box with his mouth open, or that there are 6 cell phones and 5 desk phones in a five foot radius of where I try to concentrate on difficult computational problems.
Now there is an entire orchestra of uncomposed dissonance playing at all times that I'm responsible for listening to.
Grand.
Just Grand.
I'm imagining cannons firing and drums crashing as their site gets slashdotted.
... but, frankly, can't anybody think of something better?
(I can imagine the dialog right now: wait, is the oboe a sign something is wrong, or is it the violin? Err...)
After a couple of weeks installing and configuring net-snmp, cacti and nagios, I seriously think music is NOT the way to go. Real-time graphics are a lot more informative and easier to understand. Music is fun, sure, but way too complex to understand.
Besides, I don't really like music entirely made by computers. And I am a Kraftwerk fan. Go figure.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
to specific patterns of network activity, then I would love to hear the Barry White-like sounds that the system would produce by monitoring all the pr0n coming through my Exchange server at work.......
More importantly, if your site gets slashdotted in the woods and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a noise?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/lisa2000/gilfix/gilfix_html/
Peep (The Network Auralizer): Monitoring Your Network With Sound
Michael Gilfix & Prof. Alva Couch - Tufts University
Abstract
"Activities in complex networks are often both too important to ignore and too tedious to watch. We created a network monitoring system, Peep, that replaces visual monitoring with a sonic `ecology' of natural sounds, where each kind of sound represents a specific kind of network event. This system combines network state information from multiple data sources, by mixing audio signals into a single audio stream in real time. Using Peep, one can easily detect common network problems such as high load, excessive traffic, and email spam, by comparing sounds being played with those of a normally functioning network. This allows the system administrator to concentrate on more important things while monitoring the network via peripheral hearing."
"This work was supported in part by a USENIX student software project grant. "....
The server farm is playing Taps again. It's going to be a LONG weekend.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
It has to be. Or maybe Wagner.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
It would make a much better story though if suddenly the same trained people start recognizing what's wrong with this whole world simply by listening to most popular chart hits :)
Seriously though, while the approach itself sounds like fun, it will never prove itself more useful than the textual data we all rely on as there will be no easy way for you to quickly find the necessary piece of information in the audio stream... Fast forward, anyone?! ;) I don't think so :) It's still much easier to Ctrl+F things...
Just what does a slashdotting sound like?
Ever hear cats in heat?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Classical/Baroque music styles have a tendency to put me to sleep. They don't bore me, it's just one of the few things in this world that is peaceful enough to make me nod off.
;)
That said, when a problem is found, does it start playing Hyden?
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(Suprise Symphony, if you don't get the joke.)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I figured you'd all want to hear what it sounds like:
Listen page
How come no one else here is reminded by the system made by the Gordon Way in the book by Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gently's holistic Detective Agency"? There was an application he helped create called Anthem which turned financial results and various other pieces of company data into jingles and music.
Server noise doesn't bother me. Is there a program that will translate incessantly chattering coworkers into something via headset? Maybe music, or silence or it could add a point to whatever they are rambling about. That would be cool.
ConsultingFair.com
I have seen something about a similar project that used graphical patterns and colors/intensity/patterns indicated potential problems. I think this would probably be alot nicer since it doesn't leave you staring at a monitor all day (yes I know most of us do this anyways). With networks getting larger and more complex things happening on them, projects like this are definetly an interesting avenue for monitoring. I know people that can read tcpdump screens at a truely disturbing rate, but being able to sit and "watch" all the logs of everything in their multitude of formats and indicators is going to be a huge leap forward in detection and prevention. Most intrusions aren't caught until well after the fact, if at all. Having something like this that could potentially alert admin and security folks of trouble on the network, malicious or not, would be awesome.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
No- the correct way to say that is:
If a man speaks in the forest, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
Posting as an AC because I know so many slashdotters are not married yet/ in serious relationships, and would not understand the humour in the above statement...
Safety systems in some installations handling radioactive materials broadcast a background sequence of notes/clicks (*not* anything like a geiger counter) through loudspeakers in critical areas - the 'melody' is designed to be unobtrusive under normal conditions (your mind 'tunes it out'), but the notes change under alarm conditions or when certain monitored values start moving and even minute variations in the sound are immediately obvious to those in earshot. This has been in use for tens of years. ..and some of us just have to stare at a Nagios Web page or wait for an email that triggers a 'beep' sound.
AT&ROFLMAO
Well to listen to slashdot, you could send it into a audio device. As root wget -nv http://www.slashdot.org/ && cat index.html > /dev/audio
Or you could ghetto rig the machine to output the network dump such as from tcpdump directly to a audio device, not as nice music as the original post, but it will work.
http://www1.sheridaninstitute.ca/
I remembered, I just checked the responses to be sure I didn't post a redundant post :).
So now there are two. I guess the people nowadays just don't read classics anymore...
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
man, I was gonna reply this too... was a little bit surprised to find that no-one had mentioned it and wanted to be the wiseguy, but you beat me to it!
Ok, somewhat weird commenting to my own post, but a comment http://www.janitha.com/archives/33#comment-70 says how to do this in a more crude way.
When your servers start playing Rob Zombie? I can hear the support calls already!
Dude! We just got Rocked!
It's the tiniest violin playing DoS attack concerto no. 3
In all reality, I'd love to do a Brian Eno-ish sort of "found art" album with music like this. http://www.fruityloops.com/ has a pretty cool function that turns pictures into ambient music, I'd love to hear server traffic in a similar manner.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Incredibly frelling dumb. More in one way like Smithers than SMITHERS himself. What kind of person calls a SYN packet meaning F# and an echo a middle C. Just because you can make notes doesn't mean that it's music...
If you get a zebra to jump on a keyboard and play notes, how is that music?
Much training can cause interpretation of anything. There are people who can understand speech from a frelling frequency diagram. The nerve.
I've been wanting to do this same thing with one of these Ambient Orbs.
They have a pretty complete spectrum range and can also pulse at varying speeds. I figured it could be cool (and useful) having color represent server health and pulsing equal load. The only problem is you have to transmit your info to ambient, who then transmits it to your orb 15-20 minutes later; I would prefer a more immediate local solution that didn't involve me transmitting somewhat sensitive information.
I know I know, I can make one myself, but who has the time?
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
That was my first though as well... to quote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:
"But the silliest feature of all was that if you wanted your company accounts represented as a piece of music, it could do that as well. Well, I thought it was silly. The corporate world went bananas over it."
Reg regarded him solemnly from over a piece of carrot poised delicately on his fork in front of him, but did not interrupt.
"You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers," enthused Richard. "Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and lengths. . "
"You mean tunes," said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet.
Richard grinned.
"Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that."
"It would help you speak more easily." Reg returned the carrot to his plate, untasted. "And this software did well, then?" he asked.
"Not so much here. The yearly accounts of most British companies emerged sounding like the Dead March from Saul, but in Japan they went for it like a pack of rats. It produced lots of cheery company anthems that started well, but if you were going to criticise you'd probably say that they tended to get a bit loud and squeaky at the end. Did spectacular business in the States, which was the main thing, commercially."
RIP DNA. The world makes less sense without you.
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
They are trained to recognize instruments, chords, tempo and other musical elements of music as a translation of e-mail activity from 15 servers over three subnets. Every aspect of the music correlates to information.
Bob, why is our network so slow?
I'm not sure Frank, but it may have something to do with the terrible cacophony of sounds eminating from the server room.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Ha! same here, we are now 4
I think you misunderstood the purpose of this project.
They don't want to replace all those graphic displays with music, but they intend to use sound in addition to graphics.
If you rely purely on a graphics display you would have to hire someone who has to babysit the monitor, in case something odd starts to happen. He can't really work if he has to stop every 5 minutes and check the monitor (and there are probably "false feeling of safty" effects to be countered too, after all, checking the monitor for X weeks and nothing big popping up might make the person(s) realax too much)
With the music you don't have to check at the monitor all the time, you notice when the music changes (and can go check) but as long as it remains the same you can get some real work done.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
fingernails on a blackboard
My network sounded like a couple of trains crashing into each other, in the middle of a field of empty rusting bathtubs, with a cold, harsh, north wind blowing at hurricane force. And that was on a good day :-)
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
So this is what elevator music for hackers sounds like.
Demarco and Lister's Peopleware book has a good section on the importance of a quiet workspace. In a study they quote (this one from Cornell in the 1960s), researchers split a group of computer science students into two groups, the first group listened to music through headphones and the second group was in a silent room. Each group was given the same programming problem, which consisted of a series of mathematical operations, to implement from a specification. The speed and accuracy of the programming was about the same in each group, but, the assignment itself was a trick question - the end result was that the output number was the same as in the input. And, of those that realized this, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.
Most "technical" work uses the left side of the brain, I suppose leaving the right side of the brain free to listen to music to monitor the system. But, every so often, even in what is considered "technical" work, a person needs to be creative, and it would be unfortunate if at that point in time your right side of the brain is off monitoring the system.
Of course, if multitasking is so important, audio content is really the only content which has the potential for effective multitasking.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
It might sound weird (yes, pun intended), but I've been wanting to put Pi, Phi, e, and other irrational numbers through different interpreters, including audio-generation.
My basic idea is to run calculations of of these values in base2 and then see what it "looks" like or hear what it "sounds" like when the stream of bits is interpretted in different ways.
I like the idea of a never ending song or story that never repeats. I fully expect gibberish and static when interpreting the bitstream, but I'd still like to try.
I have no idea how to go about such a thing, but it has been a curiosity of mine for a while now. Does anybody know if this has been done yet. Can anyone point me to relevant links?
Will a port scan sound like playing the scale?
A slashdotting doesn't need to sound like anything, most admins notice anyway when the server catches fire...
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Ow, synthesized orchestral music is not the most pleasant thing to listen to, even when it is real classical music. However, i have just the idea they need. Why not use a real orchestra?
Just make the network monitors output sheetmusic on little screens for all the musicians.
This will lead to a few seconds delay in the music, but nothing beats the real thing you know!
How long will it take for IT departments to request budget increases to purchase the hardware/software needed to play this music? I like listening to music at work, and now this gives a justified business reason to do so.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
By a buncha Germans calling themselves Kraftwerk. And I still can't get that damned "Autobahn" outta my head. Damn you, Ralf and Forian! Damn you to Hell!!
I'm guessing a Funeral Dirge set to Dante's Inferno
Solaris has had this same type of function for almost ten years. snoop [-d device] -a would divert network traffic to /dev/audio. The more noise you heard, the more network traffic was going off that particular interface. I remember playing with this with an old SPARCstation 10 in the mid-1990s.
No, it wasn't as complex as what this one does with chords and so forth, but the idea of using audio to listen to network traffic is nothing particularly new.
Now, if it could be customized so that specific sounds play when problems are detected, that would be cool.
High contention/high traffic: "Cap'n, me engines can't take much more o' this!"
Attempted hack: "Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!"
Feel free to continue the list. My brain hasn't had its morning load of caffeine yet.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I wonder what delightful number would be produced should something like the Blaster virus be unleashed on the network?
A death metal remix of Mozart perhaps?
Yet another reason to not run Windows Servers folks - think of your poor ears!
throw new NoSignatureException();
The CB App. What's your 20?
I wonder if a DoS attack would sound as bad as Marlin Mason.
And if the system if really good how will porno sound like... "ah ah uuuuuhhuhuuhuhu... ah ah ah uhhhhhhh"... or not? lol
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/1 2/10/1529249&mode=nested
Peep, the network auralizer
...what does it mean when Wagner comes on?
I'm a huge music freak, I listen to all kinds of stuff all through my workday nonstop. And listening to those samples...geez. If they could make that software into a truly effective network monitor (for instance, add an instrument for Snort rules going off), I could so spend my day just listening. It's actually quite nice, relaxing music.
Unpleasantries.
...while watching The Dark Crystal your head will explode!!
Chris"You can drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but It always comes roaring back again." - Tom Waits
I recall something like this from the mind of the late, great Douglas Adams. One of the protagonists in one of the two Dirk Gently books wrote a program that lets people hear information as music - I think it was spreadsheet data or something like that. The premise was that good data sounded "good."
Sounded (no pun intended) like a great idea at the time. I thought it was pretty original...
I can't find an online mention at the moment, but I remember reading about this technique used in medicine in Discover magazine about a decade ago. The idea was that the program would translate blood work and other medical data into well known melodies, offset by the difference between the patient's data and what was considered "normal". Doctors were able to more readily notice abnormalities that were out of range, and they were able to do so even when distracted or not able to pay full attention, I believe.
Or something like that. But I've joked about setting this up with our monitoring tools at work. Neat stuff.
No, you just see it up in flames 10 miles away.
From TFA:
'music has got nothing to do with work, dude, and I work.' It's kind of like saying I have a bunch of ballet dancers, and I'm going to bring them into your workplace.
Almost everyone I know listens to music at work, so I'm not sure why he feels people don't "get it". The ballet dancers OTOH is an awsome idea. I could really use a dozen or so athletic women in skin tight clothing bouncing around in the server room. If something goes wrong, they can glissade their butts over and tell me about it.
I'm gonna go talk to the CEO now...
The home web page text:
The most significant aspect of the Internet
Is its being alive
Isn't it?
What would it sound like if we listened to it?
After creating the beta version in 1996, Net Sound members agreed they wanted to listen to a greater variety of Net sounds not only those of Ohno Research Lab. Anybody who wants to make sounds over the Net, please let us know--and increase our links via Net Sound "CENTRAL."
Note: Ars Electronica Center is a media art museum in Linz, Austria, where in addition to 40 staff members working via the Net, visitors (half of whom are children) use Web terminals located throughout the museum. Approximately 300,000 people a month also access AEC's Web server from countries around the world--this is the sound source. By network terms, Austria and Japan are distant (20-25 hops) and packet loss is extensive, which at times prevents the sound from being heard.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency : althought the software there was a financial package, the character's interest extended to making music from everything in the world....
Reminds me of Information Society's bonus tracks which had data tracks in the form of sound which you had to hook up to a dumb termanal to get the text.
Also reminds me of the ole days of aohell 4.0 when i use to hum along with the modem connections.
Anyone who's been sat next to a noisy server has probably been doing this for years. I found I became rapidly attuned to normal disk activity patterns, and could detect unusual goings on very quickly.
I also used to be able to recognise the connect speed of analogue modems by listening the negotiation, but that was many moons ago..
SOunds like it's just noise to me...
Realistically, with all of the talk of people listening to music all day damaging their hearing, wouldn't silence be golden? Maybe some sort of light beacon flashing red could do the exact same thing, or a projector with a few graphs on the wall?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
...I don't even hear the music anymore. Just blonde, brunette, redhead...
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
...where Dave Bowman, attuned to the hum of the ship, hears one of the doors open.
I hate doing graveyard shift by myself. Whenever I hear something like that, I'm reacting like Shatner seeing things on the wing of the plane he's on.
How about, fingernails on a chalkboard.......
Sounds like on-hold music: "Your HTTP REQUEST is important to us. Due to an unexpected increase in HTTP traffic we cannot serve your web page at this moment. Please hold, and a process will serve your page in the order it was received, as soon as it is paged back into memory from swap. Thank you, and have a nice day."
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
While this this sounds like a fine idea, people have been doing the same thing with modems, for, oh, 30-plus years. And then there's "ping -a"...
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
I won't need my iPod when I'm in the server room?
w00t
Well, not for network operations, but for control systems in a space ship.
Walter Jon Williams had a story in which the starship control panel emitted sound patterns related to the functioning of the ship. If the characteristics of the soundscape changed that alerted the pilot that something had altered and be checked.
I think it was in the novel _Angel Station_
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
Now that there is a way to make sound with network activity, the next step will be someone will write an app that plays actual music by generating varying rates of activity.
Sort of like they used to do with lineprinters. Print patterns that make the mechanism make certain tones.
Picture a sysop sitting in the NOC late at night , when all of a sudden, the sonic network montior starts emitting Darth Vader's theme.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
seriously:
d ings/lisa2000/gilfix/gilfix_html/
http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~couch/software.html see Peep
now:
http://www.auralizer.com/
academic paper:
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/procee
I know you're half joking, but it looks from t-light-on-details-fa like they do almost exactly that - fta : "The very appearance of violins tells you we're getting locked by spam now".
Miraculously, the RIAA piracy-snooping network sounds exactly like the MP3s it detects being pirated.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Sorry, what was that, I was listen to my Bach and didn't catch that last bit.
We are the Borg...
start calling up Car Talk, trying to imitate the funny noise their network is making (a practice known as automatopoeia).
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
It appears we are five. I always wondered if it was Douglas Adams' original idea, or if he'd been inspired by some technological development. I'd like to listen to the Japanese Stock Exchange.. ;]
A guy did something similar with the human genome, translating sequences into music:
http://www.toddbarton.com/index2.asp
From Barton's website:
"One night in the studio I downloaded some of the DNA data sequence from the International Genome Project website. On a whim I entered the first couple of lines from the sequence for chromosome 1 into my midi sequencer, Xx. The resulting rhythmic and pitch pattern seized my musical imagination and I began making very simple expansions and contractions of the pattern, careful not to disturb the basic relationships."
It sounds kinda freaky, actually, but I've heard a lot worse at open mic night...
Probably not the same as this, but I made a patch for "ping", whereby it beeped, and the beep changed pitch depending on the RTT. I wanted to make it echo like Sonar, but I couldn't find out how to do it with /dev/console - I don't think you can change the volume with that.
Anyway, I forgot I had it, and one day SSHd into my machine at work to test connectivity to somewhere. 15 minutes later I get a call: "Turn that fucking beeping off!".
Get your own free personal location tracker
>Just what does a slashdotting sound like?
A tidal wave?
I use to work on a load of Digital PDP11/70's. (30+) I had to do PM's on them once a month. There was only a 6 hour window to do the work. I would start up the PDP Diag program and set the loop on error flag, then place a portable AM radio on the top of the memory (CORE). Ususaly about 5 systems running at a time. If the diag hung the radio would give out a solid tone. If the diag ran with no errors the tone was different. 26-36 anyone?
I think the point of converting logs to music is the human ear is better at picking up patterns than a pair of eyes. If you hear a melody in the beginning of the day, and hear that same melody at the end of the day you will recognize it. A melody could be 200 lines of sequential log. I doubt someone could visually remember 200 lines of log.
I think this is an excellent idea.
Nothing new here. We did that in 1971 at Tufts University on an IBM 1130. A radio set on top of the console (which I pulled all-nighters to use as a personal computer) could be made to play tunes by various deliberate non-sensical code. AND, as a system op, we could listen to know what the (batch, punched card) was up to...
So what does it mean when you hear death metal coming from your email server!
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
They could be using SMELLS to communicate aggregated information.
Ah the 'Net is full-o-beans today!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Well if one connection sounds like a beat, I imaging a slashdotting sounds like industrial techno.
Given an infinite number of packets, and the ability to represent them as tunes, all the songs ever written will be played.
Now the RIAA can sue the networks themselves if they inadvertently play copywritten melodies.
"Arrest those packets - they played 'Imagine'"
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Why is it every time I think up something reasonably clever, someone else beats me to the punch?
Oh, right. 'Cause I have to actually do it. Damn that procrastination...
My thought wasn't to put network traffic to music, but to sniff packets and generate tones of various waveforms based on the contents of those packets. I figured it would be a handy tool to get an overview of what the network was doing and to detect problems by ear.
The product wouldn't fly at orgs requiring compliance to ADA regulations.
www.TakeArms.com
Well, I suppose its not -exactly- music.... but /usr/sbin/snoop -a
/dev/audio)
(Listen to packets on
From the article: "The appearance of violins means we are getting locked by spam".
Violins? Wouldn't it have been a better alert system to instead switch the music from, say, Vivaldi to, say, Apocalyptica?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Turn your speakers/headphones down before you start.
This approach could used for the visualization (audiolization?) of all sorts of complex processes. Human hearing is good at filtering out subtleties from within a cacophony.
2 &cid=8883260
I said this a while back: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10428
-Max
Would it be information overload if one were to combine this with a waterfall display as they have in subs or even the Matrix for that matter? I believe that the brain would be able to adapt to more information than just sound alone if the coders did things correctly and you had a decent enough screen. Maybe combine it with a visualization wall display....
--- I never lie when I have sand in my shoes.
"The bells, the bells!".
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
As if a million voices cried out and were suddenly silenced?
Are there any open source projects or plans to release the code for this or something similar? It would be cool to have a gkrellm plugin that could monitor my network/disk/processor with soothing audio.
I like the idea of Nature sounds best. It would be like having an office in the middle of the jungle or in the bush. With the sound of elephants stampeding as the sweet sound of slashdotting...
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. -Victor Hugo
That's very interesting, and reminds me of a project I worked on in the late 1980s. I used a graphic analyser to check on the status of an 8 bit embedded processor. The tool would clip onto the pins of the CPU chip. The vector display would graph the data value on one axis vs. memory location on the other axis. The resulting image at first appeared to be an abstract scribble, but after a short time one could easily tell by the pattern what routine the processor was running, and if it had gotten stuck in an error handling loop. We then built another diagnostic tool that would display the RF noise spectrum emitted by the CPU, which did not require a direct connection. As in the vector display, one could discern the difference in the pattern between normal and faulty operation.
Just install the program on an OpenBSD behind an OpenBSD-based firewall :)
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
It's been done. Quotezart, the musical stock tracker. (Doesn't work on my rig; ymmv.)
Parent really needs some +Funny. I guess not even the normal /. geeks get this joke.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
IT Mgr: "How's everything running?"
Sysop: "Laaaaaa, li-li-li-laahh, LEEEEE, loooooo!"
Just what does a slashdotting sound like?
"Ride of the Valkyries" (aka "Kill the Wabbit"), no doubt.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
That Slashdot story about Peep was from way back in 2000 (not that there's anything wrong with that). You might be remembering a story here on Slashdot from about a year and a half ago, titled The Sound of Your Firewall. In a nutshell, it linked to a brief article on Linux Gazette about how to script this sort of thing. It's obviously a much simpler approach, but maybe it's one of the options you heard about. As a bonus, the Linux Gazette article also included a quick approach to getting your Caps/Scroll/Num lock lights to blink as indicators for network activity.
:-)
You can't have enough noise, and you can never have enough blinky lights...
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
(music + neurology) * fiction = feedback
It definitely didn't sound like music when I was having class next to the room they were developing it.
One hundred thousand cricket bats... WHOP.