over a long weekend. It took about 2.5 days off-and-on to bring it up. You get a hand-compiled linux install with busybox providing all of your tools. The only issue I had was that copied-over binaries worked better if you compiled them against uclibc as well. It was a fun project. One neat trick it taught me was to tar directly to the floppy device. The instructions can probably be adapted to USB media. Once I finished, I build vim and nano against uclibc and copied them over. If I recall correctly, it was a 486 laptop and most of the boot time was the BIOS setting up. If you can adapt the process to a modern machine, it will do that for which you are asking.
Ack. Bowtie is right. All my research happened months ago, so I confused them. My recollection is of a chart for a reflected multi-bay bowtie. I remember it having a nearly straight gain curve. That whole section refers to "Bowtie" antennas, so the sentence should read:
The Bowtie design is nice, because its gain is roughly even across UHF.
Perhaps other folks can find the various gain charts. I don't seem to have bookmarked them.
Needless to say, analog *anything* has been an issue. Last spring, sensing there may a be rush later, I got our two coupons from Uncle Sam, and cashed 'em in. A few points on my experience:
o Direction and gain are definitely more of an issue. Since we barely got anything analog clearly on bunny ear/loop, we got next to nothing with digital.
o With digital, it's all or nothing. Either you have clear signal, maybe with some artifacts, or you have black screen.
o *The* most annoying thing is that sounds cuts first.
o So, I did what any self-respecting tinkerer would do. I build a grey-hoverman antenna out of foam board, packing tape, tin foil, and picture hanging wire - all from from Walgreens (U.S. pharmacy):-D. http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/
o Obviously, with such rarefied materials I have a less-than-precise design - that works... really well.
o The GH antenna is highly directional. Since digital is crystal-clear, we put up with adjusting the thing in the bay window.
o We get 9-12 clear channels now, instead of 4-5 distorted ones.
o It's best to put it in an attic, or outside. Be sure to ground it, etc. The higher, the better - generally.
o Note that there are two ranges for VHF DTV, high channels and low channels. The Grey-Hoverman seems to do well with UHF DTV and high VHF. Most DTV seems to be UHF.
o Only some DTV is HD. Stations were given sub-channels. Some use only the main channel and switch back and forth between HD. Others put SD on one and HD on the other. Others use all for HD, with different content. The public television stations, strangely enough, seem to be making the best use of the sub-channels.
o The other prominent build-able design is called a Yagi. It consists of connected bow-ties, rather than zig-zag elements. The Yagi design is nice, because its gain is roughly even across UHF. The Grey-Hoverman seems to have better gain than the Yagi on some ranges, but cuts out in others. Check the frequencies of your local stations and compare them to the two antennas' gain charts before deciding.
o Why the range of channels for me? Well, in a valley the signal has echoes. Some echoes are stronger than others. Sometimes the amp makes the two echoes the same strength. In that case the converter box cannot lock in. Thus, if your location is subject to echoes (hills, valley, etc.), design your wiring to allow the easy removal of your amplifier.
o Also, atmospheric conditions seem to have an effect. On clear dry days we don't do so well; on wet or humid days, I think we could get New York City, if we wanted (we're in southern N.E.).
o Finally, going digital with a converter has one interesting benefit for you OSS fans. Since the Neuros OSD is still SD, converted DTV works nicely with it. I don't have one yet, but they are now on Amazon, and I am strongly considering getting one.
That being said, don't starfish eat mussels? I recall seeing a sped up video of some starfish decimating a group of mussels over an afternoon. Finding a zebra mussel-eating starfish may not solve the issue, but the footage was incredible!;)
I like the trend of OLPC, EEE PC, Nokia 810, and the Linux BIOS motherboards. Linux w/ OSS application stacks like Firefox/Google, OpenOffice, firewall suites (e.g. WRT54GL) etc., have advanced to the point where hardware manufacturers can ship fully functional hardware without having to buy, or worse, making the consumer buy, an OS and application stack. Making lesser hardware functional has always been a strong point of Linux (I can still use my Thinkpad 600x due to Xubuntu), so while Microsoft swells its software so that Windows based UMPCs cost almost a grand new, I see an entirely new, rapidly emerging, market of cheap, lightweight, Linux powered, highly functional devices - if only because it's much cheaper for hardware manufacturers, if they reduce their software costs. Nokia, Asus, OLPC, and Linksys are early players in this market, but I suspect, more hardware producers will follow.
Well, the OLPC XO-1 handles most of those formats and has a daylight low power reading mode and a screen that flips around for tablet reading. Mine arrived yesterday. It is one of the coolest things I have ever play with. Completely silent too, won't bother folks around you in a quiet coffee shop. Has an SD card slot and wireless. Battery has good life and handles 2000 recharge cycles. Not quiet pocket sized though;).
Unfortunately, given current trends, I think that by 2020 (the cars are from the project, Smart City 2020), most Americans will be too obese to fit in these things. I have to agree with other posters: if we put this energy into accessible public transportation, we will get a much better return on our efforts.
As others have noted, if you read the card holder agreement, the signature on the card accepts the terms of the that agreement. If you read your receipt, the signature on the receipt signifies that you agree to pay the retailer the sum charged. I do not think authentication is mentioned anywhere. So, this is my problem with credit cards and debit cards used as credit cards: there is no authentication at the time of purchase. I would like to see broad deployment of "smart" credit cards in the US. I am not a cryptographer, but I think a credit card purchase should depend on at least the following: the holder knowing a secret (PIN?), the card knowing a separate secret, the card issuer knowing a third secret, and an algorithm that ties the secrets together. That way, there is some hope of proving that the relationship between the three entities is valid at purchase time. The current system only works, because there is such massive indemnification (no responsibility for unauthorized purchases over 50.00). The indemnification does not keep fraud down; it only foists the cost of fraud onto the retailers who then raise their prices to cover themselves.
... an Intel guy I chatted with last fall said that they did not expect to put 64-bit processors in desktop machines for at least a decade. I smiled politely.;) -ghostis
Well I have my copy! Arrived in my fiancee's inbox this afternoon. She helped me analyze it in Linux over the phone. (She's a biblical scholar when she's not hacking. What's not to love?:) Well we ran strings on it, among other things: it contains a few nuggets:
o Part way down the strings output there the following:
(sync.c,v 0.1 2004 1/xx : andy)
Weird.
sync.c: I believe is a linux kernel file? Maybe it was written on Linux? Who knows.
o Further down is:
notepad %s Message
This is consistent with the notepad screenshot on McAfee.com
o Then some more weirdness:/abcd ghijklm pqrstNwxyzg ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU VWXYZ
I guess this cracker knows the alphabet. I am impressed!
o More funniness:
Sack_i smith[C &joe?neo/
Matrix fan?
o gold-Pxc
I guess this is reference to the electronic banking system it attacks
o Further down:
USERPROFI
Going for the registry I see...
o More sequences
ASCII r=it f 0aA!0123456789+
My guess is that the sequences are character food for the random message generator
o Towards the end:
Libra
I guess this hacker is indecisive;-)
o Finally, it wraps up with a list of windows dlls and function names.
-ghostis
our comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.our comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted. lameness filter food
...of smaller social experiment done at Standford with a network called Club Nexus. Orkut was an architect of that experiment. Now he operates on the grand scale of the entire internet. Orkut.com will be able to read clustering, small world effect, and weak tie strength in the global internet society.
I work at an engineering firm. The deep pipelines in the current P4 perform so poorly with general number crunching (e.g. matlab) we have almost completely switched to Athlons and are seriously considering Opteron.
This sounds like a good idea until you think about how much heat a dual cpu system puts out. Other posters have commented on the WHOOSH sound that comes out of single cpu SFF systems. In these small cases there is not the large reserve of circulating air to dissapate heat like you have in a full dual CPU tower. Hence, air must be moved through the system very quickly. You would probably be getting into the decible range of a large shop vac for dual cpu. But, if you made the outside a heat sink like car amp and then filled the inside with a huge block of metal... hmm, project for winter break!:)
Given the skyrocketing costs of health insurance, your employees may get better benefit from you giving much smaller bonuses (200 - 300) and putting the rest of the extra money towards better health insurance, or, at least, paying 100% of their health insurance costs for a few months.
Slashdot Mirror
I already do this with a Neuros OSD :-D.
-Ghostis
The obvious solution is to line your walls with tin foil, of course! ;)
-Ghostis
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/04/08/109626.aspx
Again...
-Ghostis
For large quantities of cards...
Business card books.
o Keep each card in its case for extra static protection.
o Label each card.
o If you need more metadata for a card, write in on a blank business card and slide that in behind it.
My .02,
-Adam
I recently designed some new levels for Extreme Tux Racer. They a CC and designed to be longer and faster (~8 min and ~15 min).
-Adam
A few years ago I followed:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lwl1/
over a long weekend. It took about 2.5 days off-and-on to bring it up. You get a hand-compiled linux install with busybox providing all of your tools. The only issue I had was that copied-over binaries worked better if you compiled them against uclibc as well. It was a fun project. One neat trick it taught me was to tar directly to the floppy device. The instructions can probably be adapted to USB media. Once I finished, I build vim and nano against uclibc and copied them over.
If I recall correctly, it was a 486 laptop and most of the boot time was the BIOS setting up. If you can adapt the process to a modern machine, it will do that for which you are asking.
-Adam
Ack. Bowtie is right. All my research happened months ago, so I confused them. My recollection is of a chart for a reflected multi-bay bowtie. I remember it having a nearly straight gain curve. That whole section refers to "Bowtie" antennas, so the sentence should read:
The Bowtie design is nice, because its gain is roughly even across UHF.
Perhaps other folks can find the various gain charts. I don't seem to have bookmarked them.
I live in a valley...
next to an HD-only transmitter.
Needless to say, analog *anything* has been an issue. Last spring, sensing there may a be rush later, I got our two coupons from Uncle Sam, and cashed 'em in. A few points on my experience:
o Direction and gain are definitely more of an issue. Since we barely got anything analog clearly on bunny ear/loop, we got next to nothing with digital.
o With digital, it's all or nothing. Either you have clear signal, maybe with some artifacts, or you have black screen.
o *The* most annoying thing is that sounds cuts first.
o So, I did what any self-respecting tinkerer would do. I build a grey-hoverman antenna out of foam board, packing tape, tin foil, and picture hanging wire - all from from Walgreens (U.S. pharmacy) :-D. http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/
o Obviously, with such rarefied materials I have a less-than-precise design - that works... really well.
o The GH antenna is highly directional. Since digital is crystal-clear, we put up with adjusting the thing in the bay window.
o We get 9-12 clear channels now, instead of 4-5 distorted ones.
o It's best to put it in an attic, or outside. Be sure to ground it, etc. The higher, the better - generally.
o Note that there are two ranges for VHF DTV, high channels and low channels. The Grey-Hoverman seems to do well with UHF DTV and high VHF. Most DTV seems to be UHF.
o Only some DTV is HD. Stations were given sub-channels. Some use only the main channel and switch back and forth between HD. Others put SD on one and HD on the other. Others use all for HD, with different content. The public television stations, strangely enough, seem to be making the best use of the sub-channels.
o The other prominent build-able design is called a Yagi. It consists of connected bow-ties, rather than zig-zag elements. The Yagi design is nice, because its gain is roughly even across UHF. The Grey-Hoverman seems to have better gain than the Yagi on some ranges, but cuts out in others. Check the frequencies of your local stations and compare them to the two antennas' gain charts before deciding.
o Why the range of channels for me? Well, in a valley the signal has echoes. Some echoes are stronger than others. Sometimes the amp makes the two echoes the same strength. In that case the converter box cannot lock in. Thus, if your location is subject to echoes (hills, valley, etc.), design your wiring to allow the easy removal of your amplifier.
o Also, atmospheric conditions seem to have an effect. On clear dry days we don't do so well; on wet or humid days, I think we could get New York City, if we wanted (we're in southern N.E.).
o Finally, going digital with a converter has one interesting benefit for you OSS fans. Since the Neuros OSD is still SD, converted DTV works nicely with it. I don't have one yet, but they are now on Amazon, and I am strongly considering getting one.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/24jul_plasmabullets.htm
They should send UBIsoft's ISP a DMCA takedown ;)
That being said, don't starfish eat mussels? I recall seeing a sped up video of some starfish decimating a group of mussels over an afternoon. Finding a zebra mussel-eating starfish may not solve the issue, but the footage was incredible! ;)
-ghostis
I like the trend of OLPC, EEE PC, Nokia 810, and the Linux BIOS motherboards. Linux w/ OSS application stacks like Firefox/Google, OpenOffice, firewall suites (e.g. WRT54GL) etc., have advanced to the point where hardware manufacturers can ship fully functional hardware without having to buy, or worse, making the consumer buy, an OS and application stack. Making lesser hardware functional has always been a strong point of Linux (I can still use my Thinkpad 600x due to Xubuntu), so while Microsoft swells its software so that Windows based UMPCs cost almost a grand new, I see an entirely new, rapidly emerging, market of cheap, lightweight, Linux powered, highly functional devices - if only because it's much cheaper for hardware manufacturers, if they reduce their software costs. Nokia, Asus, OLPC, and Linksys are early players in this market, but I suspect, more hardware producers will follow.
-Adam
Well, the OLPC XO-1 handles most of those formats and has a daylight low power reading mode and a screen that flips around for tablet reading. Mine arrived yesterday. It is one of the coolest things I have ever play with. Completely silent too, won't bother folks around you in a quiet coffee shop. Has an SD card slot and wireless. Battery has good life and handles 2000 recharge cycles. Not quiet pocket sized though ;).
Unfortunately, given current trends, I think that by 2020 (the cars are from the project, Smart City 2020), most Americans will be too obese to fit in these things. I have to agree with other posters: if we put this energy into accessible public transportation, we will get a much better return on our efforts.
-Adam
As others have noted, if you read the card holder agreement, the signature on the card accepts the terms of the that agreement. If you read your receipt, the signature on the receipt signifies that you agree to pay the retailer the sum charged. I do not think authentication is mentioned anywhere. So, this is my problem with credit cards and debit cards used as credit cards: there is no authentication at the time of purchase. I would like to see broad deployment of "smart" credit cards in the US. I am not a cryptographer, but I think a credit card purchase should depend on at least the following: the holder knowing a secret (PIN?), the card knowing a separate secret, the card issuer knowing a third secret, and an algorithm that ties the secrets together. That way, there is some hope of proving that the relationship between the three entities is valid at purchase time. The current system only works, because there is such massive indemnification (no responsibility for unauthorized purchases over 50.00). The indemnification does not keep fraud down; it only foists the cost of fraud onto the retailers who then raise their prices to cover themselves.
.02.
My
-ghostis
... an Intel guy I chatted with last fall said that they did not expect to put 64-bit processors in desktop machines for at least a decade. I smiled politely. ;) -ghostis
several months after the originally proposed release date of April last year.
for large values of several apparently...
...the best of both worlds under linux on Mac hardware:
http://www.maconlinux.org
-Ghostis
Well I have my copy! Arrived in my fiancee's inbox this afternoon. She helped me analyze it in Linux over the phone. (She's a biblical scholar when she's not hacking. What's not to love? :) Well we ran strings on it, among other things: it contains a few nuggets:
/abcdU VWXYZ
;-)
o Part way down the strings output there the following:
(sync.c,v 0.1 2004
1/xx
: andy)
Weird.
sync.c: I believe is a linux kernel file? Maybe it was written on Linux? Who knows.
o Further down is:
notepad %s
Message
This is consistent with the notepad screenshot on McAfee.com
o Then some more weirdness:
ghijklm
pqrstNwxyzg
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST
I guess this cracker knows the alphabet. I am impressed!
o More funniness:
Sack_i
smith[C
&joe?neo/
Matrix fan?
o gold-Pxc
I guess this is reference to the electronic banking system it attacks
o Further down:
USERPROFI
Going for the registry I see...
o More sequences
ASCII
r=it f
0aA!0123456789+
My guess is that the sequences are character food for the random message generator
o Towards the end:
Libra
I guess this hacker is indecisive
o Finally, it wraps up with a list of windows dlls and function names.
-ghostis
our comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.our comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted. lameness filter food
...of smaller social experiment done at Standford with a network called Club Nexus. Orkut was an architect of that experiment. Now he operates on the grand scale of the entire internet. Orkut.com will be able to read clustering, small world effect, and weak tie strength in the global internet society.
c /
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_6/adami
I work at an engineering firm. The deep pipelines in the current P4 perform so poorly with general number crunching (e.g. matlab) we have almost completely switched to Athlons and are seriously considering Opteron.
-ghostis
Here are some decent screenshots
-ghostis
This sounds like a good idea until you think about how much heat a dual cpu system puts out. Other posters have commented on the WHOOSH sound that comes out of single cpu SFF systems. In these small cases there is not the large reserve of circulating air to dissapate heat like you have in a full dual CPU tower. Hence, air must be moved through the system very quickly. You would probably be getting into the decible range of a large shop vac for dual cpu. But, if you made the outside a heat sink like car amp and then filled the inside with a huge block of metal... hmm, project for winter break! :)
[groaner]
> Space Control Operating System is free
No, it is SCO'S.
[/groaner]
-ghostis
Given the skyrocketing costs of health insurance, your employees may get better benefit from you giving much smaller bonuses (200 - 300) and putting the rest of the extra money towards better health insurance, or, at least, paying 100% of their health insurance costs for a few months.
-Ghostis