One slow morning, a long while ago, i hacked a small script that compared recent images from my webcam to the most recent ones, and kept aside the images that were "most interesting" (the most different from the images i already had). It has been up on my webcam since that morning, where it gathers a "top 20 of the day" where i + my friends can watch what happened in the house during the day...
The script is very small, written in (gasp) perl with the support of a small C program, in just 2-3 hours (meaning: it's ugly, but it does "some" job.). If there's any interest, i could release those few lines of code to open source (just reread the comments to this for any updates - the boss's firewall wont let me download it from here).
I thinkered with the idea of using it for security purposes the day somebody had played with my car during the night (no harm done). I would have had to boost the number of "interesting" images kept from 20 to a large number to see almost everything that would happen to the car. By chance, I never really had to set up the webcam for that.
Heck, it works so well so that i knew when our roommate brought visitors home...:-)
What it does:
1. Using my regular webcam software + ftp, just upload one image file to a directory on my linux box
2. Using the small C deamon, start the perl script, which does:
3. Calculate a value representing the image's parameters, and returns it to the c program
4. Compare the value to the 20 others, and save the image if the value is sufficiently different from the others. The more "interesting" (i.e. different) the images were in the day, the less chance they had to be thrown away.
C.
(meunierc2@nospam.netscape.net, meunierc@mail.com)
(Sorry for the shouting. I just had to get it out.)
Could anyone tell me why that company would put 300'000 credit card numbers on an online server, connected to the Internet, probably in plaintext? That's kind of tempting a little too much Murphy's laws.
Just imagine if a country/state placed its power grid controls on a server on the Net? Would that be reasonable? However secure a sysadmin thinks his machine is, that's his first responsibility to warn that new holes are discovered every day on every OS...
CDuniverse.com is totally irresponsible [i.e. should be held VERY liable for any damage that insues]: if you think of it, they were not only toying with a couple of credit card numbers; they were toying with a value of 900M$ (if you give a - very pessimistic - 3000$ mean value to each credit card number). Or 9M$ if only 1% of the credit limits are used.
I seriously think someone should look into that seriously, and hold CDuniverse.com responsible for damages that would ensue. Unfortunately, there is so many blunders (and avoidable) mistakes done in the IT field that I would not be able to recommend holding them 100% responsible for the damages. Not before a couple of years pass, at least...
That would be content dilution and waste of bandwidth, prosecutable under U.S. law 1125 section A)1.c)iii. You will shortly receive a letter from my lawyers.
If I know how to crack something, and I'm completely sure that nobody else does, would it not be to my advantage to say "Look, I'm using it!" to get others to as well?
Because: 1. They're Government 2. They need to communicate themselves this information, and what better way than the Internet? (...) 3. The 2-3% of these agencies/individuals that are really competent enough to brew their own crypto tools much, much safer won't talk about it outside the office...
If it is (#include < semigod.h >) Ken's system, using PAC compression as its core, i'd be ready to sell car & furnitures to buy it.
Without going into much details, let's say I've had a couple of opportunities to see that this compression algorithm is for far the best I've ever seen yet - and I heard if first about 3 years ago. On a single CD-R, with about 145 megabytes left, I've seen over 210 songs. When listening to the music, I would never be able to distinguish between the compressed version and a CD-quality recording. And the decompressor would probably fit on a floppy if they wanted - but i guess they'll be using the DSP version they made before hacking the Windoze version.
Wasn't it in that movie that aliens came to warn us we were about to ignite the whole Universe with our scientific experiments, or something like that?
I have had the same problem with Connectix/Logitech's QuickCam VC: last year, disappointed by discovering that the only drivers available were for the QuickCam Color and not for the VC, I wrote to Logitech to hear they wouldn't release the specs. Despite rumors that drivers for the VC exist, every time I tried to follow one of these leads shown me that lots of people confuse this with the Quickcam Color drivers.
"Oh well, i'll live with it" i said, so now there's a 486DX2/66 that sits in the room *only* to drive the Quickcam VC (and rc5des for the rest of the CPU cycles).
I would love to take the time to reverse-engineer the thing and build Linux drivers, though my efforts are best put right now on working to pay my Master's degree debts. Anybody serious willing to fund the project?
If writing a book in one day is meant to hype OSS, why not write an entire Un*x kernel in one day? All we'd need would be a multi-layered organisation to filter out gross absurdities, and a really good bunch of good programmers...
Then, we could give this kernel a name like "Harem-ess" to keep RMS happy...
[And if it works, I propose we make a Micro$oft Week to rewrite every major apps they have so we can free the market...]
Seems it helps a bit to be past-and-potentially-future buyer(s), and tell them your choices are influenced by their decisions to support the Linux community...
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One slow morning, a long while ago, i hacked a small script that compared recent images from my webcam to the most recent ones, and kept aside the images that were "most interesting" (the most different from the images i already had). It has been up on my webcam since that morning, where it gathers a "top 20 of the day" where i + my friends can watch what happened in the house during the day...
:-)
The script is very small, written in (gasp) perl with the support of a small C program, in just 2-3 hours (meaning: it's ugly, but it does "some" job.). If there's any interest, i could release those few lines of code to open source (just reread the comments to this for any updates - the boss's firewall wont let me download it from here).
I thinkered with the idea of using it for security purposes the day somebody had played with my car during the night (no harm done). I would have had to boost the number of "interesting" images kept from 20 to a large number to see almost everything that would happen to the car. By chance, I never really had to set up the webcam for that.
Heck, it works so well so that i knew when our roommate brought visitors home...
What it does:
1. Using my regular webcam software + ftp, just upload one image file to a directory on my linux box
2. Using the small C deamon, start the perl script, which does:
3. Calculate a value representing the image's parameters, and returns it to the c program
4. Compare the value to the 20 others, and save the image if the value is sufficiently different from the others. The more "interesting" (i.e. different) the images were in the day, the less chance they had to be thrown away.
C.
(meunierc2@nospam.netscape.net, meunierc@mail.com)
(Sorry for the shouting. I just had to get it out.)
Could anyone tell me why that company would put 300'000 credit card numbers on an online server, connected to the Internet, probably in plaintext? That's kind of tempting a little too much Murphy's laws.
Just imagine if a country/state placed its power grid controls on a server on the Net? Would that be reasonable? However secure a sysadmin thinks his machine is, that's his first responsibility to warn that new holes are discovered every day on every OS...
CDuniverse.com is totally irresponsible [i.e. should be held VERY liable for any damage that insues]: if you think of it, they were not only toying with a couple of credit card numbers; they were toying with a value of 900M$ (if you give a - very pessimistic - 3000$ mean value to each credit card number). Or 9M$ if only 1% of the credit limits are used.
I seriously think someone should look into that seriously, and hold CDuniverse.com responsible for damages that would ensue. Unfortunately, there is so many blunders (and avoidable) mistakes done in the IT field that I would not be able to recommend holding them 100% responsible for the damages. Not before a couple of years pass, at least...
C.
Then it's a good thing i keep my bank account already cleaned out before somebody breaks into it... ;-)
C.
That would be content dilution and waste of bandwidth, prosecutable under U.S. law 1125 section A)1.c)iii. You will shortly receive a letter from my lawyers.
Thank you for your cooperation,
C.M.
Because: 1. They're Government 2. They need to communicate themselves this information, and what better way than the Internet? (...) 3. The 2-3% of these agencies/individuals that are really competent enough to brew their own crypto tools much, much safer won't talk about it outside the office...
At least, that compensates a bit for the free speech issue...
And how is that supposed to help?
/dev/null. For only 4.95$.
If this is a hit, i will propose a new service: I will personnaly, lovingly send your spam to my box's
Without going into much details, let's say I've had a couple of opportunities to see that this compression algorithm is for far the best I've ever seen yet - and I heard if first about 3 years ago. On a single CD-R, with about 145 megabytes left, I've seen over 210 songs. When listening to the music, I would never be able to distinguish between the compressed version and a CD-quality recording. And the decompressor would probably fit on a floppy if they wanted - but i guess they'll be using the DSP version they made before hacking the Windoze version.
Must... have... one...
Wasn't it in that movie that aliens came to warn us we were about to ignite the whole Universe with our scientific experiments, or something like that?
At last we can explain Area 51...
I have had the same problem with Connectix/Logitech's QuickCam VC: last year, disappointed by discovering that the only drivers available were for the QuickCam Color and not for the VC, I wrote to Logitech to hear they wouldn't release the specs. Despite rumors that drivers for the VC exist, every time I tried to follow one of these leads shown me that lots of people confuse this with the Quickcam Color drivers.
"Oh well, i'll live with it" i said, so now there's a 486DX2/66 that sits in the room *only* to drive the Quickcam VC (and rc5des for the rest of the CPU cycles).
I would love to take the time to reverse-engineer the thing and build Linux drivers, though my efforts are best put right now on working to pay my Master's degree debts. Anybody serious willing to fund the project?
If writing a book in one day is meant to hype OSS, why not write an entire Un*x kernel in one day? All we'd need would be a multi-layered organisation to filter out gross absurdities, and a really good bunch of good programmers...
Then, we could give this kernel a name like "Harem-ess" to keep RMS happy...
[And if it works, I propose we make a Micro$oft Week to rewrite every major apps they have so we can free the market...]
-grin- I guess we'll have to wait for those hot quantum computers to hit the market...
And on which OS would they run that, NT? With all the down-time, the site won't be much of a burden to anyone but the sysadmins...
Did you notice the banner ad on top of the "news" section on that site? It's for Windoze NT... (the link is not valid any more, though.)
Errr... Is that *paid* advertisement? Would be cute. It would show that M$ really doesn't know what to do with it's money...
Seems it helps a bit to be past-and-potentially-future buyer(s), and tell them your choices are influenced by their decisions to support the Linux community...