T'was the WebStar server. This thing is harder to crack than most servers. For one, it's an application-based server, so there's no OS-level loopholes that can be exploited to crack it. And since it's hosted on regular Mac OS wich, basically, is not a network OS per say, it was very difficult to crack.
One user did succeed, however, by exploiting a security hole in a CGI called "Lasso". This is a CGI that bridges the WebStar (and other) servers to a FileMaker database. Basically, Lasso gave the possibility to store/get files off the harddrive. From there, it became relativelly easy to anyone with the knowlege of both the directory structure of WebStar and the Lasso CGI, to make modifications to a config file and upload a replacement "index.html" file.
This did not, however, alter the original index file so was not something that could do dammage per say.
Both WebStar and Lasso have been revised after the discovery of the fault.
WebStar eventually made a second contest after the fix. All people could do after a 2 month (or so) trial period were DOS attacks, so WebStar decided to pull the plug on the contest until a newer, faster version of the server could be put to test. I haven't seen announcements since to that effect.
Hydro-Quebec tested this idea on their power lines. The original idea was to use their lines as a connection between their different (and usually far-apart) plants.
After a successfull technological trial, they thought they could actually serve the entire province and split off an ISP branch.
However, plans did not go through for a couple of reasons, at that time (this was 5-7 years ago):
a) the transiant background noise would make it impractical for most purposes
b) the CRTC (broadcast gestapo of Canada) did not grant Hydro-Quebec with a permit to broadcast signal, citing unfair advantage.
The second reason would probably be moot today, as their tigh... regulatory board, loosened up a bit in the last couple of years.
In 20 years, that reel will be worth less than a pile of dog poopoo.
Lucas has used special degrading film for his trailer, and has done it as well for those reels.
He plans on making some changes during the year to the movie, like correcting some shots (the sand shots where Jar Jar Binks doesn't leave any trace is lame). So using long-lived film doesn't make any sense at this point.
Besides, they have the entire movie digitized on disks, so why botter with the life span of film?
I'm not all that versed in ion canons, other than what little is explained in The Empire Strikes Back, but...
... isn't it just enough to ground yourself to not be affected by such a stun gun? I mean, walking around with a computer wrist ground arrached to your ankle, and being in contact with the ground?
Joke or not, the use of electronic equipment does have an affect on "analogous" writing and similar operation. This was proved a couple of years ago, that overuse of electronic devices to write letters, versus good ol' pen-n-paper, gradually makes you inapt at writing with a pen.
I can transpose this to other things I usually do on computers or other electronic devices; the other day, I had to do some divisions. No computers, no calculators around. Pen and paper was it. Well, damn! I couldn't remember how to divide on paper! Took me nearly half an hour to get this thing right. (I have since remembered properly how to devide on paper, but the point is that a couple of more years and I wouldn't have been able to teahc my kid.)
I think it's pretty naive to think that someone could "loose" a (hint hint) SPY satellite.
Think about it: "The People" knows about a new spy satellite being launched. It's pretty hard to conceil a launch. And it's pretty hard to keep entire companies absolutelly silent on such a subject.
What's the best way to deal with it? "loose" it. Then, you're free doing whatever you want with the damn thing, and can peek-a-boo anyone from there, while everyone else keep a close eye on other satellite.
You did _know_ that it's possible to see a satellite from the ground, and even calculate where it's aiming to, right?
Fact: I've been working with a number of friends on a new GPL OS for PowerMacs for 2 years now. The project has been kept secret until we have something to show for, because we wanted to avoid bad press generated by past hoaxes on the subject (remember OpenOS? Infinite OS? PowerOS?). The kernel that was written for this OS (a nano+macro kernel) can boot on any PowerMacs right now, even some powerbooks that we've been able to get to. Including G3s. (In fact, this kernel supports more hardware than MkLinux and Mac OS X Server).
We have access to HFS, ADB, SCSI in all their chipsets, and a whole slew of other hardware components--all without Apple info. Even our booter is home-grown.
It's about to go public. In fact, the part I'm responsible for (the UI stuff) is already sorta public; if all goes well, I should have a company copyright disclamer today, allowing me to publish the sources as soon as tonight.
The UI is not finished and am looking for some help. It should be easy enough to make this UI run on top of Darwin and Linux. I just lack experience coding on those two platforms to do it. Besides, I seriously lack time for this.
The info on the Moira UI is at
http://pages.infinit.net/mouser/Moira/
("infinit.net" is my cable service provider's web site for users--it's in no way related to Infinite OS)
Please dont consider this as an official announcment. That'll be done later this week. Or next week. Depending on the amount of time I can put in the web site above to properly document things.
Apple, in a cost-cutting effort, has decided to move iMac manufacturing from it's Cork (Ireland) plant to a subcontractor (LG Electronics) in Mexico.
Since Apple didn't have other manufacturing needs (and because it suited their cost-cutting frenzy quite nicelly), they decided to close the Cork factory.
There was an open letter, last week, from a Cork employee called "Put a Cork in it, Apple!" wich was a good read. Look it up for details.
In high school, I got to see a 9 hours version of 2001.
The scene where Dave is in the Pod trying to come back into the space ship lasted 1 1/2 hour, where all you would hear were Bips, Bleeps, Dzoinks and breathing. Something within that cool hour, you'd end up breathing at the same rate as Dave. That was the coolest movie experience ever.
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T'was the WebStar server. This thing is harder to crack than most servers. For one, it's an application-based server, so there's no OS-level loopholes that can be exploited to crack it. And since it's hosted on regular Mac OS wich, basically, is not a network OS per say, it was very difficult to crack.
One user did succeed, however, by exploiting a security hole in a CGI called "Lasso". This is a CGI that bridges the WebStar (and other) servers to a FileMaker database. Basically, Lasso gave the possibility to store/get files off the harddrive. From there, it became relativelly easy to anyone with the knowlege of both the directory structure of WebStar and the Lasso CGI, to make modifications to a config file and upload a replacement "index.html" file.
This did not, however, alter the original index file so was not something that could do dammage per say.
Both WebStar and Lasso have been revised after the discovery of the fault.
WebStar eventually made a second contest after the fix. All people could do after a 2 month (or so) trial period were DOS attacks, so WebStar decided to pull the plug on the contest until a newer, faster version of the server could be put to test. I haven't seen announcements since to that effect.
Hydro-Quebec tested this idea on their power lines. The original idea was to use their lines as a connection between their different (and usually far-apart) plants.
After a successfull technological trial, they thought they could actually serve the entire province and split off an ISP branch.
However, plans did not go through for a couple of reasons, at that time (this was 5-7 years ago):
a) the transiant background noise would make it impractical for most purposes
b) the CRTC (broadcast gestapo of Canada) did not grant Hydro-Quebec with a permit to broadcast signal, citing unfair advantage.
The second reason would probably be moot today, as their tigh... regulatory board, loosened up a bit in the last couple of years.
In 20 years, that reel will be worth less than a pile of dog poopoo.
Lucas has used special degrading film for his trailer, and has done it as well for those reels.
He plans on making some changes during the year to the movie, like correcting some shots (the sand shots where Jar Jar Binks doesn't leave any trace is lame). So using long-lived film doesn't make any sense at this point.
Besides, they have the entire movie digitized on disks, so why botter with the life span of film?
I'm not all that versed in ion canons, other than what little is explained in The Empire Strikes Back, but...
... isn't it just enough to ground yourself to not be affected by such a stun gun? I mean, walking around with a computer wrist ground arrached to your ankle, and being in contact with the ground?
There's also MkLinux.
Joke or not, the use of electronic equipment does have an affect on "analogous" writing and similar operation. This was proved a couple of years ago, that overuse of electronic devices to write letters, versus good ol' pen-n-paper, gradually makes you inapt at writing with a pen.
I can transpose this to other things I usually do on computers or other electronic devices; the other day, I had to do some divisions. No computers, no calculators around. Pen and paper was it. Well, damn! I couldn't remember how to divide on paper! Took me nearly half an hour to get this thing right. (I have since remembered properly how to devide on paper, but the point is that a couple of more years and I wouldn't have been able to teahc my kid.)
This is amusing.
We'll again see computers that come with rubber bands to hold them ROM Packs and memory cards.
"What's the best rubber band I can get to run Linux on that thing?"
I think it's pretty naive to think that someone could "loose" a (hint hint) SPY satellite.
Think about it: "The People" knows about a new spy satellite being launched. It's pretty hard to conceil a launch. And it's pretty hard to keep entire companies absolutelly silent on such a subject.
What's the best way to deal with it? "loose" it. Then, you're free doing whatever you want with the damn thing, and can peek-a-boo anyone from there, while everyone else keep a close eye on other satellite.
You did _know_ that it's possible to see a satellite from the ground, and even calculate where it's aiming to, right?
Of course Be could make it's OS run on G3s.
Fact: I've been working with a number of friends on a new GPL OS for PowerMacs for 2 years now. The project has been kept secret until we have something to show for, because we wanted to avoid bad press generated by past hoaxes on the subject (remember OpenOS? Infinite OS? PowerOS?). The kernel that was written for this OS (a nano+macro kernel) can boot on any PowerMacs right now, even some powerbooks that we've been able to get to. Including G3s. (In fact, this kernel supports more hardware than MkLinux and Mac OS X Server).
We have access to HFS, ADB, SCSI in all their chipsets, and a whole slew of other hardware components--all without Apple info. Even our booter is home-grown.
It's about to go public. In fact, the part I'm responsible for (the UI stuff) is already sorta public; if all goes well, I should have a company copyright disclamer today, allowing me to publish the sources as soon as tonight.
The UI is not finished and am looking for some help.
It should be easy enough to make this UI run on top of Darwin and Linux. I just lack experience coding on those two platforms to do it. Besides, I seriously lack time for this.
The info on the Moira UI is at
http://pages.infinit.net/mouser/Moira/
("infinit.net" is my cable service provider's web site for users--it's in no way related to Infinite OS)
Please dont consider this as an official announcment. That'll be done later this week. Or next week. Depending on the amount of time I can put in the web site above to properly document things.
Apple, in a cost-cutting effort, has decided to move iMac manufacturing from it's Cork (Ireland) plant to a subcontractor (LG Electronics) in Mexico.
Since Apple didn't have other manufacturing needs (and because it suited their cost-cutting frenzy quite nicelly), they decided to close the Cork factory.
There was an open letter, last week, from a Cork employee called "Put a Cork in it, Apple!" wich was a good read. Look it up for details.
In high school, I got to see a 9 hours version of 2001.
The scene where Dave is in the Pod trying to come back into the space ship lasted 1 1/2 hour, where all you would hear were Bips, Bleeps, Dzoinks and breathing. Something within that cool hour, you'd end up breathing at the same rate as Dave. That was the coolest movie experience ever.