Radio?!? Soon cars will have gizmos that receive windows media streams over the internet via their wireless internet connection. The major commuter highways will have wireless internet service as soon, no doubt. These "smart" signs are doomed.
It may not be such a big deal if it only reduces by 2%. Is the effect cumulative? The device is a disk, after all. If it's solid, then build the disk above a disk. 98% of 98% is 96.04% If you build a big stack of these 34 high you should be able to reduce the weight to about 50%. (.98 ^ 35 ~=.5) If it's hollow, then build 35 concentric rings, like the rings of a tree.
Of course, if it doesn't work that way, I'd love to hear why.
-Wyck
Re:Why haven't others used wood?
on
Hardwoodware
·
· Score: 1
That's rediculous. Most computers do sit in a wood enclosure. A desk. Not all of them are completely enclosed because of cooling requirements. I know I had a nice wooden desk with a door in the front for the computer compartment but BOY would it get hot in there! What people could be building are desks with cooled / ventilated enclosures that you can just put your case in directly. Of course there's still the necessity to run all the cables, etc. which makes it a slightly more challenging cooling puzzle. Then there's the pesky access to removable media, etc. What we need is wireless everything, so that the noisy / bulky stuff can all be somewhere else. Hmmm...but how do we make a wireless powercable...
I became a professional video game developer in 1993. I was going to university for Computer Science and flunked out because of some family problems. I was unemployed for 11 months when a friend of mine saw a poster at a local college looking for someone to write a video game. He just copied down the number for me to call and didn't really tell me what I was getting into. What I didn't know was that I was about to get an interview and land a job with the soon-to-be creators of a major video game (I'll change the names to protect the innocent.).
I was seriously concerned going into this interview that my mere two-and-a-half years of university and an incomplete Computer Science degree weren't going to be enough to secure a job in the gaming industry. Fortunately I was a bright kid and I had a good track record through high school.
My strongest qualification was that I had been programming since I was 8 years old, and I could answer all of my interviewer's questions with expert authority. I knew my stuff and I had a huge portfolio of software I had written. They were personal projects, not professional software packages, but the content was appropriate.
If you asked me how I got these qualifications, and how I learned so much, here is what I would tell you:
I devoted a lot of time to computers in my childhood. I learned the tools of the trade early, and I was a computer hobbyist to the extreme. I experimented many different kinds of programming. I delved into hardware by building crude joysticks. I read my computer manuals nightly. I convinced my teachers at school to allow me to submit interactive software and computer generated videos for my assignments while the rest of my class was worrying about whether to double space their printouts. I was never afraid to attempt harder things, and I always had ambition to continue to improve my skills.
Another key thing is that all the people I hung around with were very smart. Peer pressure never held me back. I had a few friends who were computer enthusiasts like me and I worked with them on computer projects all the time. I always picked the brains of people who knew more than me, and I always searched for smart people who could answer my questions.
My one piece of advice would be "Program!" Do it as often as you can, in every way you can think of, and always push yourself to do better.
The one way in which I wasn't as strongly qualified as I could be was that I didn't play as many games as some people. Don't get me wrong, I've played games countless nights and long enough to dry out my eyeballs, but I have my favorites and those are the ones I play. I don't follow the magazines and web sites to find out what's new and what's coming out soon. I once asked my boss what he thought the perfect qualifications were. He said, "They'd have to have started programming on the first computer they ever owned, and now they'd have to eat, sleep and breathe video games." It turned out I was only half qualified for the job. I was bored and useless at trade shows. In fact, one year everybody but me and one other guy at the company went to E3 (a huge computer game expo).
Having said that, the hiring practices of the company were not in accordance with my boss's vision. Some of the less glamorous ways to get a job (all of which happened): sleep with the boss, grow up with the boss, give the boss a gift, have all the same toys and childhood fantasies as the boss. And an only slightly more reputable way to join the team was to be forced aboard by the publisher.
The guy we hired to run out and pick up fast food for us all actually became a level designer because of his keen aspirations and constant dedication. One other potential employee just visited the company every day and said, "So, can I work here yet?" He would sit in on brainstorming sessions and review latest content before he was even hired! His relentless determination got him hired, and now he's lead level designer.
I only lasted 5 years in the video game industry, now I work in the television industry--a job I got through a head-hunter. It's an adventure filled career track, but it is not for those who are fond of sleep.
Consider the Tiger Team. Hackers are hired by corporations to enter their systems and find security holes.
I actually got a chance to do this myself when I was in high school. The school was interested in this fancy new IBM network for the business students. One of the sales pitches was that it was so secure. My Computer Science teacher approached me and, after relating the details of the school's recent purchase and telling me that the network was just newly installed and was now up and running, he asked me and a friend of mine to see if we could "break in" to it.
When we asked for clarification of what "break in" meant, he said that he just wanted to see what we could do: Examine teacher's files or other students work, disable services, delete or corrupt files, etc. So we went to work on it, and here's what we discovered.
(Although I understand MUCH more about computers now, I'll try to relate this story at the level technical understanding I had of it in high-school.)
The system was quite secure from the outside. A username and password was required for any kind of entrance to the system. The workstations had floppy disks, but booting from them was disabled. There were bios passwords on all systems. The computers were physically locked closed and chained to the desks. Apart from the possibility of vandalism, the computers were relatively secure. (Another not-so-cool student in the school had recently been in trouble for stuffing a floppy disk with bits of tractor feed and lighting them on fire! It's hard to protect against that because he did it in class, right under the teacher's nose.)
We commenced trying to guess passwords. "administrator" "root" "backup" and other kinds of accounts would typically have secure passwords, while user accounts were less careful and would have easy-to-guess passwords. We succeeded in logging in with guest accounts and even guessed the password of a couple empty test accounts. Both were no-privlege student accounts.
Then we found it... The backup user, which of course has privleges to read just about everything for the purposes of archiving data, had a password that was the same as the login name. A two part security flaw, one, the bogus password, and two, the privileges of the backup user were not restricted to read-only. This meant that we could delete pretty much anything we wanted to...and we did.
Although the commands (executables) were restricted, so we couldn't run any programs, the basic command line was sufficient to move, rename or delete files and directories. With no recursive delete at our disposal, we began deleting every file we could.
We were destroying school property with mad abandon. Since my friend and I were working concurrently, I would often change in to a directory, get a list, and try to delete everything only to recieve a message like, "file does not exist". My friend would shout out "got it!" as he sat at the workstation beside me and deleted a directory he realised I was working on, and had beaten me to the punch in deleting it.
Soon the very last directories were deleted, and in trying to delete the Netowrk Operating System files themselves and the command line implementation, the system went down...hard. It couldn't be brought back up. And thanks to the security there was no more fixing it, no way to log in, even with legitimate accounts. The network software was trash.
With nothing left to destroy, we revisited our teacher. "What could you do?" he asked.
We responded, "We found out that we could delete stuff."
"What did you delete?" asked our teacher.
We glanced at each other and responded very matter-of-factly, "Everything."
The teacher was taken aback and his jaw dropped open a couple of inches. He quickly rushed over to find the IBM technician and confirm that the damage had been done.
A few hours later we spoke again.
"You really shouldn't have done that," began his response. I feared the worst: that perhaps he was going to change his story and blame us for the crime. I was sure I had dont the right thing. The teacher wanted us to find out what we could do. Surely that included seeing if it was possible to delete the very last file off the network and reboot after that. The only empirical test for which was the complete annihilation of the network resources.
My teacher explained, "That guy from IBM was here for three days installing all that software, and he's pissed that he has to do it all over again." Sure he was pissed! He was kicking himself for not changing the default password on the backup account. I'd be pissed too, mostly because over the course of three days, I couldn't really guarantee that I could have done any better, or not made a similar mistake.
The IBM worker buckled down for another 3 days of contract labour with the school, re-installing the software, taking extra caution, this time, to change ALL the passwords and ALL the privleges.
So the day ended with a reprimand for me and my friend, and my teacher never mentioned the incident again.
* * *
But the real problem wasn't that we discovered that we could delete everything, it's that we DID delete everything. The outcome was good, though, wasn't it? I mean, we helped to make the network more secure, and got the guy 3 days more pay, right? And FYI: I'd just like to apologise if the whole reason that schools don't have any money is because bratty hackers like us. I didn't know any better.
So if you're going to hire a Tiger Team, sure the teenagers may find the gaps, but will they act professionally? I certainly didn't, and it wasn't out of malice, it was just that I was young and didn't know any better.
I had this dream where I just typed "whistler install crack" into Google, and read the procedure to circumvent the installation prevention to my new machine. My new installation ran smoothly, while I listened to whatever I damn well pleased from Napster on my old box. When I woke up I was relieved to find that I was running Linux anyways.
*whew*
Slashdot Mirror
Radio?!? Soon cars will have gizmos that receive windows media streams over the internet via their wireless internet connection. The major commuter highways will have wireless internet service as soon, no doubt. These "smart" signs are doomed.
It may not be such a big deal if it only reduces by 2%. Is the effect cumulative? The device is a disk, after all. If it's solid, then build the disk above a disk. 98% of 98% is 96.04% If you build a big stack of these 34 high you should be able to reduce the weight to about 50%. (.98 ^ 35 ~= .5) If it's hollow, then build 35 concentric rings, like the rings of a tree.
Of course, if it doesn't work that way, I'd love to hear why.
-Wyck
That's rediculous. Most computers do sit in a wood enclosure. A desk. Not all of them are completely enclosed because of cooling requirements. I know I had a nice wooden desk with a door in the front for the computer compartment but BOY would it get hot in there! What people could be building are desks with cooled / ventilated enclosures that you can just put your case in directly. Of course there's still the necessity to run all the cables, etc. which makes it a slightly more challenging cooling puzzle. Then there's the pesky access to removable media, etc. What we need is wireless everything, so that the noisy / bulky stuff can all be somewhere else. Hmmm...but how do we make a wireless powercable...
-wyck
I became a professional video game developer in 1993. I was going to university for Computer Science and flunked out because of some family problems. I was unemployed for 11 months when a friend of mine saw a poster at a local college looking for someone to write a video game. He just copied down the number for me to call and didn't really tell me what I was getting into. What I didn't know was that I was about to get an interview and land a job with the soon-to-be creators of a major video game (I'll change the names to protect the innocent.).
I was seriously concerned going into this interview that my mere two-and-a-half years of university and an incomplete Computer Science degree weren't going to be enough to secure a job in the gaming industry. Fortunately I was a bright kid and I had a good track record through high school.
My strongest qualification was that I had been programming since I was 8 years old, and I could answer all of my interviewer's questions with expert authority. I knew my stuff and I had a huge portfolio of software I had written. They were personal projects, not professional software packages, but the content was appropriate.
If you asked me how I got these qualifications, and how I learned so much, here is what I would tell you:
I devoted a lot of time to computers in my childhood. I learned the tools of the trade early, and I was a computer hobbyist to the extreme. I experimented many different kinds of programming. I delved into hardware by building crude joysticks. I read my computer manuals nightly. I convinced my teachers at school to allow me to submit interactive software and computer generated videos for my assignments while the rest of my class was worrying about whether to double space their printouts. I was never afraid to attempt harder things, and I always had ambition to continue to improve my skills.
Another key thing is that all the people I hung around with were very smart. Peer pressure never held me back. I had a few friends who were computer enthusiasts like me and I worked with them on computer projects all the time. I always picked the brains of people who knew more than me, and I always searched for smart people who could answer my questions.
My one piece of advice would be "Program!" Do it as often as you can, in every way you can think of, and always push yourself to do better.
The one way in which I wasn't as strongly qualified as I could be was that I didn't play as many games as some people. Don't get me wrong, I've played games countless nights and long enough to dry out my eyeballs, but I have my favorites and those are the ones I play. I don't follow the magazines and web sites to find out what's new and what's coming out soon. I once asked my boss what he thought the perfect qualifications were. He said, "They'd have to have started programming on the first computer they ever owned, and now they'd have to eat, sleep and breathe video games." It turned out I was only half qualified for the job. I was bored and useless at trade shows. In fact, one year everybody but me and one other guy at the company went to E3 (a huge computer game expo).
Having said that, the hiring practices of the company were not in accordance with my boss's vision. Some of the less glamorous ways to get a job (all of which happened): sleep with the boss, grow up with the boss, give the boss a gift, have all the same toys and childhood fantasies as the boss. And an only slightly more reputable way to join the team was to be forced aboard by the publisher.
The guy we hired to run out and pick up fast food for us all actually became a level designer because of his keen aspirations and constant dedication. One other potential employee just visited the company every day and said, "So, can I work here yet?" He would sit in on brainstorming sessions and review latest content before he was even hired! His relentless determination got him hired, and now he's lead level designer.
I only lasted 5 years in the video game industry, now I work in the television industry--a job I got through a head-hunter. It's an adventure filled career track, but it is not for those who are fond of sleep.
- Wyck
Consider the Tiger Team. Hackers are hired by corporations to enter their systems and find security holes.
I actually got a chance to do this myself when I was in high school. The school was interested in this fancy new IBM network for the business students. One of the sales pitches was that it was so secure. My Computer Science teacher approached me and, after relating the details of the school's recent purchase and telling me that the network was just newly installed and was now up and running, he asked me and a friend of mine to see if we could "break in" to it.
When we asked for clarification of what "break in" meant, he said that he just wanted to see what we could do: Examine teacher's files or other students work, disable services, delete or corrupt files, etc. So we went to work on it, and here's what we discovered.
(Although I understand MUCH more about computers now, I'll try to relate this story at the level technical understanding I had of it in high-school.)
The system was quite secure from the outside. A username and password was required for any kind of entrance to the system. The workstations had floppy disks, but booting from them was disabled. There were bios passwords on all systems. The computers were physically locked closed and chained to the desks. Apart from the possibility of vandalism, the computers were relatively secure. (Another not-so-cool student in the school had recently been in trouble for stuffing a floppy disk with bits of tractor feed and lighting them on fire! It's hard to protect against that because he did it in class, right under the teacher's nose.)
We commenced trying to guess passwords. "administrator" "root" "backup" and other kinds of accounts would typically have secure passwords, while user accounts were less careful and would have easy-to-guess passwords. We succeeded in logging in with guest accounts and even guessed the password of a couple empty test accounts. Both were no-privlege student accounts.
Then we found it... The backup user, which of course has privleges to read just about everything for the purposes of archiving data, had a password that was the same as the login name. A two part security flaw, one, the bogus password, and two, the privileges of the backup user were not restricted to read-only. This meant that we could delete pretty much anything we wanted to...and we did.
Although the commands (executables) were restricted, so we couldn't run any programs, the basic command line was sufficient to move, rename or delete files and directories. With no recursive delete at our disposal, we began deleting every file we could.
We were destroying school property with mad abandon. Since my friend and I were working concurrently, I would often change in to a directory, get a list, and try to delete everything only to recieve a message like, "file does not exist". My friend would shout out "got it!" as he sat at the workstation beside me and deleted a directory he realised I was working on, and had beaten me to the punch in deleting it.
Soon the very last directories were deleted, and in trying to delete the Netowrk Operating System files themselves and the command line implementation, the system went down...hard. It couldn't be brought back up. And thanks to the security there was no more fixing it, no way to log in, even with legitimate accounts. The network software was trash.
With nothing left to destroy, we revisited our teacher. "What could you do?" he asked.
We responded, "We found out that we could delete stuff."
"What did you delete?" asked our teacher.
We glanced at each other and responded very matter-of-factly, "Everything."
The teacher was taken aback and his jaw dropped open a couple of inches. He quickly rushed over to find the IBM technician and confirm that the damage had been done.
A few hours later we spoke again. "You really shouldn't have done that," began his response. I feared the worst: that perhaps he was going to change his story and blame us for the crime. I was sure I had dont the right thing. The teacher wanted us to find out what we could do. Surely that included seeing if it was possible to delete the very last file off the network and reboot after that. The only empirical test for which was the complete annihilation of the network resources.
My teacher explained, "That guy from IBM was here for three days installing all that software, and he's pissed that he has to do it all over again." Sure he was pissed! He was kicking himself for not changing the default password on the backup account. I'd be pissed too, mostly because over the course of three days, I couldn't really guarantee that I could have done any better, or not made a similar mistake.
The IBM worker buckled down for another 3 days of contract labour with the school, re-installing the software, taking extra caution, this time, to change ALL the passwords and ALL the privleges.
So the day ended with a reprimand for me and my friend, and my teacher never mentioned the incident again.
* * *
But the real problem wasn't that we discovered that we could delete everything, it's that we DID delete everything. The outcome was good, though, wasn't it? I mean, we helped to make the network more secure, and got the guy 3 days more pay, right? And FYI: I'd just like to apologise if the whole reason that schools don't have any money is because bratty hackers like us. I didn't know any better.
So if you're going to hire a Tiger Team, sure the teenagers may find the gaps, but will they act professionally? I certainly didn't, and it wasn't out of malice, it was just that I was young and didn't know any better.
-Wyck
I had this dream where I just typed "whistler install crack" into Google, and read the procedure to circumvent the installation prevention to my new machine. My new installation ran smoothly, while I listened to whatever I damn well pleased from Napster on my old box. When I woke up I was relieved to find that I was running Linux anyways. *whew*