When a project is maintained/coded by a sole person, ever thought of donating some computer *hardware* to the cause? Maybe that "old" Athlon 500 isn't useful to you, but for someone else, it might come in handy. For a sole developer, especially someone doing it in his or her part time, why don't you drop him/her an email and offer some old equipment. In a simular vein, you could offer web hosting if the project needs a website, or (more labor intensive) help them on their documentation or FAQs, after all, you can help out OSS even if you don't have coding skills.
Just my $.02
Which reminds me. Why doesn't someone with decent graphical skills and some time on his/her hands drop the coder of eagle eye nethack a line and offer to increase the number of images. Last time I played the game, I was hampered by the lack of images, with several monsters/items having the same image. Of course, my graphical skills suck, I don't even trust myself to do color shifting to make an iron/steel sword into a bronze sword, but someone must have the skills and the time.
From what I'm told (and no, I'm not a fan of the series), Highlander used cheap aluminum blades for the series and they would often break.:)
But don't tell the Highlander fans that. They're rabid. I'd rather tell a group of heavily armed OS fanatics that Microsoft is good and that they are just a bunch of commies.:) At least they won't torture me first (at least, not much).
Well, I don't know too much about the science behind swordfighting, but I do know that many European broadswords had a dull edge, sometimes to the extreme of having a 1/8" flat edge.
Of course, the fun thing about this fact is that everytime you repeat it, you sound like an idiot.:)
Not sure what you are exactly requesting to do, but in a lot of network solutions that I've set up, there is a shared folder mapped to a specific drive letter on all computers, and users are instructed to save data to that drive only, which is backed up nightly.
Of course, what this article neglects to mention is legacy software. I've seen customers use DOS-based programs since there is no other solution. For these people, upgrading to win2k is sometimes a problem, ne'ermind a *nix solution. The saddest thing is that the source of the DOS programs aren't planning to make a win32 version until 2002. (For the curious, the programs xmits insurance information, without the program, claims cannot be transmitted and thus the business loses a huge percentage of its income.)
Debian is an easy system to install/uninstall, including most apps. Its also not too hard to make a barebones system. This is why I'm playing with Debian (after installing RH for a friend for a very specific task - and no, its not connected to the network, I don't trust a 6.2 install for security especially when I don't know jack about it. I don't have problem's with the distro's security, I have a problem with my knowledge on how to impliment it.)
So, why do I want a minimal install and the ability to add/remove stuff easily? Because, I feel that I learn better when I have to do everything myself. It may take longer, and I'll probably screw up bigtime, and get hacked/crash the system, but I'll be learning. Anyways, right now, the box is being used as a temporary file server that doesn't have anything over a week old on it, and nothing critical. (I dial up at home, at work I can use a T1, a box I can SSH into at work is rather useful).
At the moment I'm running OpenSSH, proFTPd, and Apache, and looking at configuring TinyDNS, as well as setting up Tripwire. Slowly, I'll learn. Heck, later I'll probably add Gnome, but atm, I'm happy in the command line.
Woot, isn't that great?! Instead of doing a low-end dirty boring computer job that will not look good on a resume and will not lead to any advancement or additional job skills, you can enter the rewarding and high-paced field of fast-food service that usually gives one a few dollars more then minimum wage so you can support an extravegant lifestyle.
Wish I had thought of that.
Seriously though, apply, apply, apply. Someone will screw up and hire you. Worse comes to worse, go for the low-paying tech job, learn skills, and then ditch your present employer for one that will pay more, based on your work experience. Or else consult, do simple PC repair. Invest a few hundred into looking official, and just have a second phone line. Charge something like $30/hour to do the work, it'll be lower then the competition, but more then you can make at Kmart.
An AC writes: 99% of cable modem and DSL subscribers do NOT need to run servers of any kind.
Er, wait a second. Lets examine that statement. A server can be for more then ftp/http. For example, you are telling me that 99% of all DSL/Cable subscribers have never hosted a 'net game? I think that doesn't sound realistic.
Think, then post.
~ Das
What I want/need
on
Case Tweaking
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Screw fancy case mods, what I want is a case that puts the back of the case in front, and then moves a few bays so they are accessable, as well as the power buttons. If you have a lot of connections that you change frequently in the back of a PC, you know the feeling.
It would have to be a full tower, to get enough height above the motherboard for the cd drive and floppy, and it should have 2x 5 1/2" bays, but as long as everything is excessable from one side, I'd be happy.
My bad. I haven't looked at them for awhile, I was recalling this entirely from memory.
USB Keyboards would only have 4 wires, ground, hot, data+ and data-. If USB Keyboards all work in the same way (which I'm assuming, since BIOSes have an USB Keyboard option, so it doesn't appear as if they need seperate drivers) then what I said about AT and PS/2 keyboards also holds true for USB keyboards.
Now, for the off-topic part of this:
What my plans are to do (probably over this boring Minnesota winter) is to get an old cocktail style arcade machine, gut it, throw in a stripped computer monitor and a hacked case to support a motherboard, and then take a keyboard splitting circuit (available on the net), and plug a regular keyboard in it, for maintainance, and the other end will go to a specially made circuit, home-etched, created by stealing the design/encoder from an existing keyboard, so I don't have to pay $100+ for Happ's solution. Since the keyboards I've examined have a small (about 2" x 4") circuit board, and runs the input grid on two sheets of plastic, I can examine the circuit board to remake the circuits, and trace the grid for the button press info. Other fun parts of this project include hacking a mouse to be a trackball (arcade style), and breaking apart a cheap joystick for an analog controller, or else making one from scratch. Oh, and probably going with DOS for the OS, since its MAME friendly, although Linux would work, with a few patches for a journelling filesystem.:)
I don't know about the exact adapter the FBI was using, but I have researched keyboards for emulation projects (hacking a keyboard to get many possible inputs, etc).
Most keyboards have a "grid" made of two rows of wires, to simply put it, a horizontal row, and a vertical row (which isn't exactly true, but is very close to how it works). When you press a button, you close the circuit between one of the vertical rows and one of the horizontal rows. Now this is sent to a small circuit in the keyboard that is basically a decoder chip, that tranfers the specific horizontal row/vertical row combination into a key. This small circuit is usually on a circuit board, and is custom to each type of keyboard. So far, we are finding it difficult to put a keystroke logger into the keyboard. However, the decoder circuit is hooked up to the cable that sends it to the computer. There are either 5 or 6 wires used (I believe 5, one is extra), and there is enough space inside most motherboards that it would be possible to put a small circuit in it. All you need to do is to tap into the wires inside of the keyboard and you have a bug that can install in a few minutes, and is undetectable unless you take the keyboard apart.
Then again, I see other posters talking about an adapter that fits on the end of the plug, in the back of the computer, which would work, but is an inelegant, and very easily found solution. Inside the computer would work also, but would have to interface to the back of the ps/2 adapter, or to motherboard traces, and I'm guessing the grounded case would hinder transmissions of signals. OTOH, cases are easier to take apart, and there is usually a lot more space.
Btw, remember the Ewok movies, cartoon, and other assorted crap? Ewoks were huge (do an ebay search for ewok), and hated by a lot of folk. But, since you don't remember this, I guess its time to strap you to a chair and force you to watch all of the ewok spinoffs until you puke.
OTOH, you gave me a nice thought: Thank god for no full-length Jar Jar movies or cartoons. There was only one Episode One.
I'm sorry I'm not 3l33t3 d00d downloading warez versions of XP. I'm certainly not following the beta process of an OS I have absolutely no intention of installing even when it's final. So, stick your ego....
WinXP has been in beta for awhile now, someone in the local shop has been testing a prerelease version for the past month. In Microsoft's big package of fun software you can get for $500/year, the latest one the local shop got included WinXP (arrived this week).
So, don't start flaming people who have actually researched and used an OS that a vast majority of us will probably come in contact with over the next few years. Some of us can't support a Linux only setup, there are end users, and customers, with software sometimes going back years, and specialized equipment with windows only support. Hint: Linux may be nice, but it doesn't work everywhere, for everyone.
(Oh, replace "Linux" with your operating system of choice. The argument doesn't change.)
Since I'm interested in a local wan that needs about a 2 mile range on the cheap, here's a listing of prices (completed auctions) a Ebay.
The prices seem to be about $50 - 60, not bad for a small WAN, but I think I can't get the range I need yet.:( Maybe someone has a better solution out there.
Tiny Personal Firewall - Free but powerful Firewall
VNC Client/Server - Remote Administration Tool
WarFTP - FTP Daemon
Blender - Raytracer
CDex - CD Extractor/Ripper
Gimp - Image Manipulation Tool
POV-Ray - Ray Tracer
Realplayer - Multimedia Viewer
VirtualDub - Multimedia Editor
Winamp - Audio Player
Windows Media Player - Multimedia Viewer
XnView - Image Viewer/Converter
Of all the most useful software on my computer that I paid for has to be Norton Systemworks (anti-virus software GOOD, 'cept for McAfree). Although, I'm almost tempted to pay a few bucks for a good FTP server capable of file ratios, bandwidth limits, and a built-in scheduler to disable/enable the server.
Hey now, be nicer, show the newbies how to add that to a cron job.
OTOH, TinyFirewall was much easier for me to figure out then IPChains. Although, probably, part of that was that TinyFirewall is graphical, and has a nice interface, while I decided to attempt IP chains through editing text files.
Sure, most of its crap (sorry, but its true), but if you know who and where to look for stuff, you find some pretty good sci fi and fantasy tales out there.
A lot of it is nicely understated, and plot takes awhile to develop, a nice change of pace compared to American movies and (most) novels.
Oh well, just my $.02.
Dasunt, who's waiting on the Mermaid's Trilogy by Takahashi.
Re:Badass compression algorithm?
on
Share The Pi!
·
· Score: 2
Okay, now my head hurts. Lemme think for a minute.
Lets say I want to find the number 100. By your theory, I'd have to look up 10^100 digits of pie. Saying my query is found halway through it, I find a position of 1/2 * 10^100 digits, right, or 5e99. Now lets say I had a number simular to 5e99. Couldn't I "condense" it by transmitting the info as "first place 100 shows up in pi?" Of course, this means the decompressor needs to be pretty quick at calculating digits of pi. Still, it sounds pretty interesting.:)
Of course, to make it more reasonable, you'd just break it down into X "digit" chunks, which could be found closer to the beginning of the pie numerical string, etc.
Here's Dasunt's patented way for teaching computer literacy:
Get a bunch of kids, all of the recent games, don't give them product keys, but give them a debugger, deassembler, and a hex editor, and a book on the basics of ASM code.
See, the trick is, to give them *motivation* to learn.;)
Of course, this trick can be expanded to include later subjects. Want them to learn c/c++ in a linux environment? Just take away their windows machines, give them a windows game, the WINE source code, gcc, and a book on programming. If you want them to learn driver programming, just give them the latest vid card, any specs you can find, and some coding tools (this way they learn reverse engineering too).
Of course, this way has the added benefit of people learning computers to play games, which is all computers really are about to most people.;)
[End Humor]
Btw, I agree 150% with people taking typing and learning how to use calculators, etc. The one semester I took in typing in 8th grade benefitted me greatly. Of course, to really hone your typing skills, just start mudding, it gave me a typing rate of 100+ wpm with no errors. When typos can be fatal, and you are mudding a few hours each day, you'd be surprized how good your typing gets.
No, no, don't mod me as a troll yet, hear me out...
Unfortunately, for a lot of us, we will find ourselves in environments with windows machines. If you need to interact with Windows, it might be better not to seem like a dumb monkey randomly clicking things. Yes, linux is superior in a lot of ways, but if you learn more about windows, you'd probably be surprized at what you can do.
Also, I'd recommend a book on PC repair, a book on computer hardware, and a nice book on electronics. They come in handy sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people who preach "save it for marriage" assume that married people have no need for information about birth control?
Yes, this was offtopic to the main thread, but not offtopic to the post I was replying to.
When a project is maintained/coded by a sole person, ever thought of donating some computer *hardware* to the cause? Maybe that "old" Athlon 500 isn't useful to you, but for someone else, it might come in handy. For a sole developer, especially someone doing it in his or her part time, why don't you drop him/her an email and offer some old equipment. In a simular vein, you could offer web hosting if the project needs a website, or (more labor intensive) help them on their documentation or FAQs, after all, you can help out OSS even if you don't have coding skills.
Just my $.02
Which reminds me. Why doesn't someone with decent graphical skills and some time on his/her hands drop the coder of eagle eye nethack a line and offer to increase the number of images. Last time I played the game, I was hampered by the lack of images, with several monsters/items having the same image. Of course, my graphical skills suck, I don't even trust myself to do color shifting to make an iron/steel sword into a bronze sword, but someone must have the skills and the time.
From what I'm told (and no, I'm not a fan of the series), Highlander used cheap aluminum blades for the series and they would often break. :)
But don't tell the Highlander fans that. They're rabid. I'd rather tell a group of heavily armed OS fanatics that Microsoft is good and that they are just a bunch of commies. :) At least they won't torture me first (at least, not much).
Well, I don't know too much about the science behind swordfighting, but I do know that many European broadswords had a dull edge, sometimes to the extreme of having a 1/8" flat edge.
Of course, the fun thing about this fact is that everytime you repeat it, you sound like an idiot. :)
Not sure what you are exactly requesting to do, but in a lot of network solutions that I've set up, there is a shared folder mapped to a specific drive letter on all computers, and users are instructed to save data to that drive only, which is backed up nightly.
Of course, what this article neglects to mention is legacy software. I've seen customers use DOS-based programs since there is no other solution. For these people, upgrading to win2k is sometimes a problem, ne'ermind a *nix solution. The saddest thing is that the source of the DOS programs aren't planning to make a win32 version until 2002. (For the curious, the programs xmits insurance information, without the program, claims cannot be transmitted and thus the business loses a huge percentage of its income.)
Debian is an easy system to install/uninstall, including most apps. Its also not too hard to make a barebones system. This is why I'm playing with Debian (after installing RH for a friend for a very specific task - and no, its not connected to the network, I don't trust a 6.2 install for security especially when I don't know jack about it. I don't have problem's with the distro's security, I have a problem with my knowledge on how to impliment it.)
So, why do I want a minimal install and the ability to add/remove stuff easily? Because, I feel that I learn better when I have to do everything myself. It may take longer, and I'll probably screw up bigtime, and get hacked/crash the system, but I'll be learning. Anyways, right now, the box is being used as a temporary file server that doesn't have anything over a week old on it, and nothing critical. (I dial up at home, at work I can use a T1, a box I can SSH into at work is rather useful).
At the moment I'm running OpenSSH, proFTPd, and Apache, and looking at configuring TinyDNS, as well as setting up Tripwire. Slowly, I'll learn. Heck, later I'll probably add Gnome, but atm, I'm happy in the command line.
I know a guy who used to have a paper route. It didn't teach him responsibility. It taught him only to deliver papers to the customers who complained.
Thinking about it, maybe it *did* teach him a valuable life skill.
My bad. When I'm tired, my spelling gets homonymic. (Its a weird thing)
Woot, isn't that great?! Instead of doing a low-end dirty boring computer job that will not look good on a resume and will not lead to any advancement or additional job skills, you can enter the rewarding and high-paced field of fast-food service that usually gives one a few dollars more then minimum wage so you can support an extravegant lifestyle.
Wish I had thought of that.
Seriously though, apply, apply, apply. Someone will screw up and hire you. Worse comes to worse, go for the low-paying tech job, learn skills, and then ditch your present employer for one that will pay more, based on your work experience. Or else consult, do simple PC repair. Invest a few hundred into looking official, and just have a second phone line. Charge something like $30/hour to do the work, it'll be lower then the competition, but more then you can make at Kmart.
An AC writes: 99% of cable modem and DSL subscribers do NOT need to run servers of any kind.
Er, wait a second. Lets examine that statement. A server can be for more then ftp/http. For example, you are telling me that 99% of all DSL/Cable subscribers have never hosted a 'net game? I think that doesn't sound realistic.
Think, then post.
~ Das
Screw fancy case mods, what I want is a case that puts the back of the case in front, and then moves a few bays so they are accessable, as well as the power buttons. If you have a lot of connections that you change frequently in the back of a PC, you know the feeling.
It would have to be a full tower, to get enough height above the motherboard for the cd drive and floppy, and it should have 2x 5 1/2" bays, but as long as everything is excessable from one side, I'd be happy.
Lets assume that, unless proven otherwise, all people are law abiding.
Thus, there is no need for cameras in public.
*Sigh* This will probably be modded as "troll".
Dasunt, master of the understated argument.
My bad. I haven't looked at them for awhile, I was recalling this entirely from memory.
USB Keyboards would only have 4 wires, ground, hot, data+ and data-. If USB Keyboards all work in the same way (which I'm assuming, since BIOSes have an USB Keyboard option, so it doesn't appear as if they need seperate drivers) then what I said about AT and PS/2 keyboards also holds true for USB keyboards.
Now, for the off-topic part of this:
What my plans are to do (probably over this boring Minnesota winter) is to get an old cocktail style arcade machine, gut it, throw in a stripped computer monitor and a hacked case to support a motherboard, and then take a keyboard splitting circuit (available on the net), and plug a regular keyboard in it, for maintainance, and the other end will go to a specially made circuit, home-etched, created by stealing the design/encoder from an existing keyboard, so I don't have to pay $100+ for Happ's solution. Since the keyboards I've examined have a small (about 2" x 4") circuit board, and runs the input grid on two sheets of plastic, I can examine the circuit board to remake the circuits, and trace the grid for the button press info. Other fun parts of this project include hacking a mouse to be a trackball (arcade style), and breaking apart a cheap joystick for an analog controller, or else making one from scratch. Oh, and probably going with DOS for the OS, since its MAME friendly, although Linux would work, with a few patches for a journelling filesystem. :)
I don't know about the exact adapter the FBI was using, but I have researched keyboards for emulation projects (hacking a keyboard to get many possible inputs, etc).
Most keyboards have a "grid" made of two rows of wires, to simply put it, a horizontal row, and a vertical row (which isn't exactly true, but is very close to how it works). When you press a button, you close the circuit between one of the vertical rows and one of the horizontal rows. Now this is sent to a small circuit in the keyboard that is basically a decoder chip, that tranfers the specific horizontal row/vertical row combination into a key. This small circuit is usually on a circuit board, and is custom to each type of keyboard. So far, we are finding it difficult to put a keystroke logger into the keyboard. However, the decoder circuit is hooked up to the cable that sends it to the computer. There are either 5 or 6 wires used (I believe 5, one is extra), and there is enough space inside most motherboards that it would be possible to put a small circuit in it. All you need to do is to tap into the wires inside of the keyboard and you have a bug that can install in a few minutes, and is undetectable unless you take the keyboard apart.
Then again, I see other posters talking about an adapter that fits on the end of the plug, in the back of the computer, which would work, but is an inelegant, and very easily found solution. Inside the computer would work also, but would have to interface to the back of the ps/2 adapter, or to motherboard traces, and I'm guessing the grounded case would hinder transmissions of signals. OTOH, cases are easier to take apart, and there is usually a lot more space.
Agreed.
Btw, remember the Ewok movies, cartoon, and other assorted crap? Ewoks were huge (do an ebay search for ewok), and hated by a lot of folk. But, since you don't remember this, I guess its time to strap you to a chair and force you to watch all of the ewok spinoffs until you puke.
OTOH, you gave me a nice thought: Thank god for no full-length Jar Jar movies or cartoons. There was only one Episode One.
What version did warftpd gain a scheduler to turn itself on/off?
Thanx for your reply in advance.
I'm sorry I'm not 3l33t3 d00d downloading warez versions of XP. I'm certainly not following the beta process of an OS I have absolutely no intention of installing even when it's final. So, stick your ego ....
WinXP has been in beta for awhile now, someone in the local shop has been testing a prerelease version for the past month. In Microsoft's big package of fun software you can get for $500/year, the latest one the local shop got included WinXP (arrived this week).
So, don't start flaming people who have actually researched and used an OS that a vast majority of us will probably come in contact with over the next few years. Some of us can't support a Linux only setup, there are end users, and customers, with software sometimes going back years, and specialized equipment with windows only support. Hint: Linux may be nice, but it doesn't work everywhere, for everyone.
(Oh, replace "Linux" with your operating system of choice. The argument doesn't change.)
Someone mod the parent post up.
I agree 100%, I used to use Zone Alarm, but TinyFirewall is way more configurable, and has the same restriction (free for personal use).
Since I'm interested in a local wan that needs about a 2 mile range on the cheap, here's a listing of prices (completed auctions) a Ebay.
The prices seem to be about $50 - 60, not bad for a small WAN, but I think I can't get the range I need yet. :( Maybe someone has a better solution out there.
Free software for windows.
Of all the most useful software on my computer that I paid for has to be Norton Systemworks (anti-virus software GOOD, 'cept for McAfree). Although, I'm almost tempted to pay a few bucks for a good FTP server capable of file ratios, bandwidth limits, and a built-in scheduler to disable/enable the server.
Hey now, be nicer, show the newbies how to add that to a cron job.
OTOH, TinyFirewall was much easier for me to figure out then IPChains. Although, probably, part of that was that TinyFirewall is graphical, and has a nice interface, while I decided to attempt IP chains through editing text files.
Pssst, Manga (and to a lesser extend, Anime).
Sure, most of its crap (sorry, but its true), but if you know who and where to look for stuff, you find some pretty good sci fi and fantasy tales out there.
A lot of it is nicely understated, and plot takes awhile to develop, a nice change of pace compared to American movies and (most) novels.
Oh well, just my $.02.
Dasunt, who's waiting on the Mermaid's Trilogy by Takahashi.
Okay, now my head hurts. Lemme think for a minute.
Lets say I want to find the number 100. By your theory, I'd have to look up 10^100 digits of pie. Saying my query is found halway through it, I find a position of 1/2 * 10^100 digits, right, or 5e99. Now lets say I had a number simular to 5e99. Couldn't I "condense" it by transmitting the info as "first place 100 shows up in pi?" Of course, this means the decompressor needs to be pretty quick at calculating digits of pi. Still, it sounds pretty interesting. :)
Of course, to make it more reasonable, you'd just break it down into X "digit" chunks, which could be found closer to the beginning of the pie numerical string, etc.
[Stick Tongue in Cheek]
Here's Dasunt's patented way for teaching computer literacy:
Get a bunch of kids, all of the recent games, don't give them product keys, but give them a debugger, deassembler, and a hex editor, and a book on the basics of ASM code.
See, the trick is, to give them *motivation* to learn. ;)
Of course, this trick can be expanded to include later subjects. Want them to learn c/c++ in a linux environment? Just take away their windows machines, give them a windows game, the WINE source code, gcc, and a book on programming. If you want them to learn driver programming, just give them the latest vid card, any specs you can find, and some coding tools (this way they learn reverse engineering too).
Of course, this way has the added benefit of people learning computers to play games, which is all computers really are about to most people. ;)
[End Humor]
Btw, I agree 150% with people taking typing and learning how to use calculators, etc. The one semester I took in typing in 8th grade benefitted me greatly. Of course, to really hone your typing skills, just start mudding, it gave me a typing rate of 100+ wpm with no errors. When typos can be fatal, and you are mudding a few hours each day, you'd be surprized how good your typing gets.
No, no, don't mod me as a troll yet, hear me out...
Unfortunately, for a lot of us, we will find ourselves in environments with windows machines. If you need to interact with Windows, it might be better not to seem like a dumb monkey randomly clicking things. Yes, linux is superior in a lot of ways, but if you learn more about windows, you'd probably be surprized at what you can do.
Also, I'd recommend a book on PC repair, a book on computer hardware, and a nice book on electronics. They come in handy sometimes.