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The 5 Coolest Hacks of '07
ancientribe writes "Nothing was sacred to hackers in '07 — not cars, not truckers, and not even the stock exchange. Dark Reading reviews five hacks that went after everyday things we take for granted even more than our PC's — our car navigation system, a trucker's freight, WiFi connections, iPhone, and (gulp) the electronic financial trading systems that record our stock purchases and other online transactions."
This isn't quite a real "hack", but more of a "social hack" if you will.
In 1967 Abbie Hoffman and a group of protesters thew fake money onto the floor of the NYSE (it wasn't blocked by glass back then). Trading on the floor *actually stopped* while traders scrambled around trying to collect the money. Kinda ironic that they'd stop to do that, considering how much more they were actually making doing their real trading. Wikipedia has a little bit on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman. I don't really know much about Hoffman, but I found the story very amusing myself.
when i drove an 18 wheeler i hauled a some very expensive loads, once i picked up a load of Macintosh computers from Apple's Sacramento's warehouse and hauled them to Omaha Nebraska, another time i picked up wine (the kind you can drink) in several locations in northern California and hauled them to Little Rock Arkansas, thats just two examples, the Macs were the most expensive, (i bet there were close to half a million dollars worth of freight in Macs) when Apple was loading those Macs they told me to only stop at well lighted truck stops & stay away from roadside rest areas and given me a designated route along with the bill of lading...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Uhm, bullshit. The worst this attack can do is to either
In neither case does Kelly's mother need to be concerned with "how a hacker could redirect her brand-new car navigation system to a deserted dead end street far from her intended destination." For that one needs to be able to pretend to be a group of satellites. This possibility the article does not cover — either due to the (mentioned) lack of imagination (on behalf of the author itself), or because it is not really possible (because Pentagon's designers of the system thought about it first, maybe).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yeah.. about that..
Didn't someone follow their GPS into a river or something recently?
Oh, maybe I'm thinking of the trucker who followed his GPS into a low bridge on a two-lane parkway that's for non-commercial vehicles only. People need to not rely so much on technology. (Especially while operating a motor vehicle which could potentially kill someone or cause damage to things..)
GPS is better than a google map, becuase if you mess up there's some ability to recover, but it pales in comparison to actually being able to read a real map, or know your way around someplace. I love maps, and I like my GPS ok, but mostly because I like feeling superior when it's wrong.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Spotted in Sydney and posted to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECoA8pi9Rmk
A road-side advisory sign.
Mate you nailed it. I was once asked for directions to the nearest fast food joint, which was a couple of hundred metres down the main road and then right at the lights before the freeway. Easy peasy, right? No, not at all, the conversation followed along the lines of
"It's literally just left then right at the lights"
"no, wait, my nav doesn't recognise the name. Can you spell it for me?"
"i think its called - wait - Dude, turn left, drive 200 m, then right at the lights!
"Did you say Heathcote Rd?"
Then I drove off and left her standing there. Wonder if she found it? shrug!
We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
I concur. I found that was happening when I used to wear digital (numbered) watches. After about 10 years of pure digital, I ended up getting a nicer dress watch which had hands, I realized it took me about 5 seconds to remember how to read time. Since then I have only had watches with hands on it. Even though I always have a cell phone which will tell me the time, I find I feel naked without a watch.
I used to be a gay hacker. Then they changed the meanings of all the words, now I'm a happey equipment modifier. No, I'm heterosexual but they changed the meaning of "gay" from "happy and carefree" to "homosexual" and changed the meaning of "hacker" from "someone who writes quick-and-dirty but functional code, or modifies equipment" to "an electronic burglar".
I was incredibly disappointed with the article (RTFA? I must be new here), so much so that I made it no farther than page one of the short five page adfest. I thought it was going to be about hacking a wi-fi connection so that it doubled as a firewall or something. We nerds still use "hacker" in the old fashioned sense, just as we geezers still sing "deck the halls" without thinking about sodomy.
Ok, I know language evolves, but unlike the evolution of organisms the evolution of language is usually stupid. Like "gay", which now means "homosexual", half of whom attempt suicide. I never could understand what was so gay about suicide. Now the kids are twisting the word "gay" to mean clumsy, stupid, or dorky.
As to hacking, fine, now a hacker is a burglar. What do we nerds who write quick single-use code, or those of us who take a soldering iron to a transistor radio to turn it into something besides a radio, call ourselves now?
And could someone please point to an real NERD article somwhere that actually has the ten best hacks of 2007, instead of the ten best cracks of 2007?
I'm glad I can afford to be modded down because this really annoys me and I want to know what the rest of the slashdot audience thinks. I wish I'd seen this when it was fresh, nobody will likely seee this comment to mod it down anyway.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
GPS are good at telling where you specifcally are. Maps tell you more easily where in relationship to other things you are once you know where you are.
I do some long distance Motorcycle Rallies, and I have runs in some rallies using maps only, GPS only and both maps and GPS. I like having both.
Plan route with the map( see the relationships), key points/stops in GPS and voila a succesful fun rally.
But yeah GPS only was the worst experience.
In normal car trips to relatives I have mixed results with GPS only. On one hand, using GPS on trips has taken me on some wonderful roads that I would not have tried otherwise. On the other hand it has taken me through traffic snarls and traffic light fests that almost ruin the trip. I suppose newer models that interface with traffic reports and allow better options in routing may make the experience more positive overall.
I just got my first car with OBD2 (yes, it's been a while) and it says right in the manual that it records about 60 seconds of driving information that can be used against me in the case of an accident whether I give permission or not. I want a hack that automatically erases that information in the event of a button push or airbag deployment. That's complete crap if you ask me...
A corporation is a large-scale version of a street vendor that has access to a larger quantity of inventory/services. It's as much of a hack as using a more powerful processor for a task, no matter how much Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor believes otherwise.