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What To Do With 78 USB Drives Next Christmas?
ArfBrookwood writes "Every year, I write a Christmas Letter and send it to about 50 people, and every year, it's different. One year it was just the word blah blah blah over and over with keywords, one year I made papercraft wallets with full color cards and money in them, another year I created a Christmas Letter writing contest that instructed the recipients to create our Christmas Letter for us and we awarded prizes to winners, last year, I took a fake retro photo of my family, Inkscaped/GIMPed in a chemistry set and some wall art, printed it onto CD covers, and burned retro Christmas songs onto digital vinyl and sent everyone in the family what looked like a miniature Christmas album. Last week, I came into the possession of 78 2GB USB drives. I have already taken the time to wipe them clean and reflash the memory so they are blank slates." Now, Arf's looking for suggestions for how to best use all these drives; read on for more.
"My first inclination was to remove the USB drives from their careful packaging and plastic enclosures, dump them into a slurry of glue and rock dust, sandpaper the USB port to make it look ancient, and then make some videos or include some oddly formatted numbered/whatever text files to make them look like they cam from some dystopian wasteland fallout-3 type future and then package them in envelopes that looked like they were from some central futuristic government post office. The idea would be that in the future, incidents that happened this year would have had a profound affect on the future. I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule — I have to outdo whatever I did the last year."
"My first inclination was to remove the USB drives from their careful packaging and plastic enclosures, dump them into a slurry of glue and rock dust, sandpaper the USB port to make it look ancient, and then make some videos or include some oddly formatted numbered/whatever text files to make them look like they cam from some dystopian wasteland fallout-3 type future and then package them in envelopes that looked like they were from some central futuristic government post office. The idea would be that in the future, incidents that happened this year would have had a profound affect on the future. I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule — I have to outdo whatever I did the last year."
Send them to me.
If you're such a prodigy maybe you can come up with your own ideas.
Rick Roll on every one.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
They are just the right size to make excellent 200-yard rifle targets.
Or you could build an array out of them or something productive.
Shooting at them with a .308 would be more fun though.
Well, whatever you do, it's going to get out now, I'm sure at least one of these people read /.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
1 - I would put a personalized "virtual advent calendar" (ha! the hard part is answering what that means) on them.
and
2 - I would decorate them as a Christmas ornament (if not put them inside an actual glass ornament with only the plug exposed) so they have a use beyond the first year.
You paid for the rights to those songs, right? Using the relevant authority for licensing in question?
re: the USB dealies:
Trade them up until you get a house (like the craigslist guy a while back), then write a regular letter with cryptic clues (but not too cryptic) to find the place, the first person who reaches it gets the deed.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Thing Drive Tricks
Give-away Drives
Send out something like a video where you're recording your family and make like a UFO or monster attack. Since you have no problem with copyright, steal scenes from a cloverfield or war of the worlds dvd. Melt the cases a little and put in a manila envelope along with a letter from a fake law firm "In case of death".
At the end of the video, show your dead bodies, laying in christmas sweaters on the ground with bits of fire all around and superimpose the text "Merry Christmas 2009!"
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Put a customized Linux distro on each one with people's names as login names, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Do the USB drives have usage lights?
1.Remove them from their casing, exposing their green PCB organs.
2.Buy a stack of USB hubs, and chain them together. Plug your usb drives into the hubs.
3.Arrange the usb drives in the form of a chrismas tree.
4.Set up a program to access the flash drives at random, causing their usage lights to flash.
Et Voila, flashing usb christmas tree!
This year, add an autorun file that uploads everything on their harddrive to your FTP server and then formats their filesystem. Next year, send them USB drives containing everything that was deleted, or since you won't be on speaking terms with anyone after that you not bother and save a lot of time making cards. Win-win situation really.
Teach them all a lesson about attaching strange USB drives to their machines: fill the drives with viruses!
Christmas. Bah humbug.
Maybe put some books on them?
;-)
I checked, Dickens' A Christmas Carol is on there
I'm sure they'd appreciate a donation if you do. They do a great job.
Put the USB drives in an industrial shredder then eat them all. Die from heavy metal poisoning and internal hemmoraging. Then have someone send pictures of the experience to all these people who you send Christmas cards to, saying "Sorry for being such a gigantic, insecure shitlord and sending you gimmicky Christmas shit every year for no damn reason. As a token of the sincerity of my apology, here are pictures of me killing myself by ingesting metal scraps. It was extremely painful. I hope you will remember me in death as the attention-whoring sycophant I am, and tell your children about the dangers of mercury poisoning. God bless."
And a Merry Christmas to you too!
Puppy? Tinyme would probably be easier.. It comes with a PDF viewer. Write your Christmas letter, print it to a pdf, and stick it in the "startup" on the installed distro? dunno, too much work maybe.. but it'd be cool.
-Troll, Flamebait, and Offtopic are NOT equivalent to disagreement.
Yeah, I guess I am kind of boring that way. Hooray for utility over aesthetics!
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
On the link to the blog talking about the Christmas album, it says the cover was "Photoshopped". Here on Slashdot, to appease the FOSS freaks this slang gets changed to "GIMPed". That's real classy.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
I'd label each one "Do Not Use This Drive." I'd put a program on it labelled, "Do Not Open This Program." Create the program so that it causes their mail client to email you from their email account. See how many emails you get. This would be a good opportunity to teach them how they can protect themselves from data theft, trojans, etc.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
...then read it and realize that it's still June (well almost).
Christmas Botnet. Not only are worms the gifts that keep on giving, but you'll always be that much closer to everyone you give them to!
Stripe a 158GB drive across all 78, then distribute them such that drive can only be read when all 78 are assembled together. Of course, the contents would be a rickroll or similar.
There's a project that already does most of that:
http://sam.zoy.org/lmos/
although be sure to change the default included placeholder media.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Do something actually useful. Donate'em to an inner city middle school.
Oh GOD, the horror!
And send them to a police department too (one that specialises in tech), that will sure give them a reason to scratch their heads.
OH WHAT COULD IT BE?! But you should genuinely put some really hard file in it, so that after 10 years or so trying to crack it, make it one thing and one thing only: the extremely over-used Rick-roll, which by then will have become a cult.
Praise be to Rick.
Fill all of them with porn and the recipe for free beer.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And wait for the $$$ to roll in.
I jest, of course (but it would work a treat).
I never tell anyone what the Christmas Letter will look like, and I have only one rule â" I have to outdo whatever I did the last year.
I fear I've fallen into that trap too, last year I made some edge lit christmas cards but instead of using coin batteries I included twisted white wire with a soldered USB plug so the card will never run out of power (unless you switch your PC off). Just about everyone who received one loved it.
:)
This year I'm planning on doing another edge lit card but with several layers, powered by a SMD PICAXE chip embedded into the card for animation, flashing, sequencing or whatever I decide.
The year after next I may do yet another USB powered edge lit card but include a flash drive for a christmas video or something *shrug* hopefully I'll get some good ideas from this topic
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Along those lines, let me add these tips:
1. Take an unused PC (or virtual machine) and install Ubuntu on it just the way you want to send it out.
2. You must decide if your distribution will include any home directories, or otherwise will be a 'proper distribution'. You need to know this to continue your setup. If you include a home directory, you can setup themes, firefox extensions, everything in-advance really.
3. Install and use Remastersys, which will create a large .iso file for the next step. : http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/remastersystool.html
4. In Ubuntu, select System > Adminsitration > Create a USB startup stick
5, you need to allocate how much space to to give this new USB PC. Slide it MOST of the way to the right (to create space for the user files) but not all the way (to leave some space for the OS, patches and new application installs in the future, etc.); I *think* this is technically accurate, YMMV.
6. Answer as per your setup decisions made on Step 2.
7. Send a whole bunch of free software out on USB sticks using some postal services.
8. Profit!!!!
- - - - -
Now having done this, I wonder how severe the implications are of breaking whatever laws cover the following:
Applications like Google Earth 5.0 require a user to agree to Google's non-transferable licensing terms, (although I can install Google earth 4.3 without entering into an agreement during the install, but never-mind). It SEEMS like I could setup apps like Google Earth 5 in advance for my mother and not risk too much trouble with the law, even though she lives in the US, while I'm now in Europe. But what about doing the same thing for a relatively small Christmas card list of close personal friends who I trust not to rat me out to Google? What about sending them Skype also? (But note that SIP-based Ekiga still gets my strong support over Skype wherever possible)
Just put a .txt on them with the URL to this story.
My webcomic
Fill the USB drives with DOSBox and some DOS Shareware games so they can remember what gaming was like in the 1980's when PC clones running MS-DOS were all the craze.
Put in some family videos in AVI files on the USB drives, make them Christmas themed or if you recorded prior Christmas days of kids opening up presents you can use those videos.
Fill it full of PNG and JPEG Christmas photos.
That CD you made, convert the songs to MP3 format and put them on the USB drive so they can load them onto their iPods, Zunes, iPhones, Blackberries, etc.
Don't listen to the people telling you to put viruses and email programs on the USB drives, that is not what Christmas is all about.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
...filled with pirated movies and music, then place 78 anonymous calls to the RIAA and MPAA.
That's an awesome suggestion.
Add to that the fact that the guy made me think about Xmas in May.
How we know is more important than what we know.
One possibility would be to create a family "treasure chest" of sorts. Well in advance of the holiday season, ask everyone in the family to contribute something (according to a theme). Then, you collect all the submissions and put them (along with your letter) on each USB drive.
As a concrete example of a theme, one year an aunt of mine asked everyone in the family to contribute their favourite recipe. Then, she typed all of them up and sent everyone a collected-effort recipe book. It was such a simple thing, but everyone in the family loved it.
You could do this with any number of themes: recipes, old photographs, favourite stories from the past, etc. Then, put your Christmas letter along with this treasure chest on the USB drives.
Create a puzzle that will require the cooperation of all the recipients to complete. The contents of each drive should be tailored to the individual. Computer-savvy people could have an encrypted document or image on their drive; computer dunces could have a simple text file that says "Call Joe at 870-555-1234 and tell him to give the password on his drive to Mark at 901-555-4567." Put hints on some drives, and images, and text files, and passwords, and instructions that, if all are followed, will result in the final unveiling of something cool.
The "something cool"? I don't know. If you have some money laying around, it could result in uncovering a bunch of $10 iTunes gift certificate codes on some web site somewhere. (But it'd have to be done in such a way that each person involved can claim exactly one certificate.)
Ideally, build some redundancy into the puzzle so that even if 10 or 20 people don't participate, the remainder can still get something cool in the end.
If you choose to do this (and I must say I think my idea is pretty awesome), keep me posted on what you do. My contact info is on my /. profile.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
Since most flash devices cycle the sectors to reduce wear, would this really work very well?
I'm also wondering if "dd if=/dev/zero of=(usb sticks)" could be trusted...
can't believe it hasn't been brought up yet. shame on you all.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
We would be happy to have USB drives as a donation. We use them to send out digital talking books to the blind and print disabled. Please feel free to contact me.
Gregory Kearney
Manager - Accessible Media
Association for the Blind of Western Australia
61 Kitchener Avenue, PO Box 101
Victoria Park 6979, WA Australia
Telephone: +61 (08) 9311 8202
Telephone: +1 (307) 224 4022 (North America)
Fax: +61 (08) 9361 8696
Toll free: 1800 658 388 (Australia only)
Email: gkearney@gmail.com
Don't link your blog on Slashdot, then make it invitation only to read. Stupidest thing I ever saw.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Giving the USB drives to a worthy cause (like the Association for the Blind) that can use them is the best idea. But if you couldn't find a worthy cause that needs them, consider selling them on eBay and giving the money raised to a worthy cause. Hey, you could even buy one of those OxFam / World Vision / etc gift cards and send that to your mother in lieu of an Xmas present. (Depending on your mother of course ...)
Install a good PortableApp AntiVirus and Anti-Malware program, along with a nice HTML or Flash message with some links to some other good driver update, etc scanner programs...Do yourself and your Christmas Card list a favor - help them help themselves!
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
Load them with porn.
Okay, not a serious suggestion... just something to share.
...never mind the inaccuracies of the mix). Sent everyone the traditional card/envelope invite, along with a USB drive to each household.
My (now) wife and I wanted to be a little different with our wedding invitations, to do something a little nerdy (got married in December too, so practically last Christmas). We ended up getting something like 40 512MB USB drives for cheap from Overstock.com, put leather cording and metal heart charms on them, and put our wedding invitations on those (done in Flash CS3 with Atari 2600-ish graphics and animation, fakey scan lines, animated blocky snow, Commodore 64-ish music, etc.
Definitely got better responses than what I'd imagine we'd get doing mail-in cards alone, and helped further identify all the geeks in our families. Made a social gathering all the more entertaining for a couple who otherwise loathes social gatherings on a pseudo-grand scale. =P
Really, I completely despise folk like you who have nothing better to do with your time than craft delusional "Christmas Greetings" to send to your less artistic/creative/self-important acquaintances. Of course, in times past the cretinous, badly photocopied "Christmas Letter" or "Roundrobin" was equally abhorrent, but at least that could be seen for what it was and disposed of accordingly.
Do you really think your recipients are going to wade through 512Mb of computer dross, just because you sent it? Or that it'd get more than one play before getting reformatted and used for something more useful?
Here's a suggestion that would generate a bit more seasonal cheer.
Buy a big bundle of high quality Christmas cards supporting the charity (or charities) of your choice. Write an individual, unique heart-felt greeting in each one and post them in time for the last week before Christmas. Then the recipients can pin them up and have a colourful reminder of your regards throughout the Christmas season, rather than a few minutes of irritation.
As for the USB sticks, why not enclose them as an unencumbered gift to those who might have a use for them. Or donate then to a worthy cause.
Next time you post a story, put links that actually work without a fucking password, mmmkay?
ArfBrookwood? More like Arfwit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How would you feel with x-mas to be lectured about security ? ...
The post was about a X-MAS PRESENT, not a X-MAS bomb ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..