I'm still looking for the good solution to getting my DirecTivo on the network. I have the O'Reilly Hacking TiVo book, but I never managed to get a bash prompt out of it. The drive upgrade went very smoothly though. I have TV shows from mid-december still recorded. I spent part of yesterday watching old Twilight Zone reruns.:)
If anyone has real hints on getting HMO or the networking hacks going on a DirecTivo (HDVR2), I'd appreciate it. And no, I won't go with the other device options. I'm very fond of the TiVo, even if I can't play with it via my computer.
Two people have ever asked me to give them a copy of a show that I had recorded on TiVo. In both cases, they missed the show for some reason. I'm not set up to copy the shows off, so they were both out of luck.
Another friend set my TiVo to record their shows for them, in case they missed it at home. They can just come over at their leasure, and watch it here.
Piracy? Not really, everything's been on broadcast TV. I'm not removing the commercials, and really it makes for one extra viewer of those commercials.
If I could send the shows over to them easier, then that would still increase the viewer base of both the show and commercials.
Any argument against TiVo is the same crap that went on with the invention of the VCR. Oohh ya, that was the end of technology, wasn't it?:)
I don't watch the commercials on my TiVo. Fast forward, skip, or more commonly ignore them. Advertisments are a nice time to go get a drink, or something. Of course, I do find that it's interesting that I watch 1 hour shows in just about 30 minutes from most stations. It's almost to the point of having a little bit of television mixed in with all the advertisments.
When you're *so* sure that you're so safe, that's the day some piece of spyware is going to sneak in through a new MSIE exploit, log all your passwords, find all your credit credit card numbers, and swoosh them off to some hacker in [insert evil country here], where they'll proceed to read your webmail, buy porn and money orders with your credit cards, and lock you out of everything you do online.
Every time I look at a Windows machine, I ask myself, "Is this machine safe?" The answer is very rarely "yes".
What's more fun is the expression on your face next week. It's usually just about a week after you feel all cocky about something, that it'll come back to bite you. You'll end up turning to a friend like me (not me, but someone who knows their shit), and asking for help. That smug smile that you're wearing now, as you talk about the 59 Win32 hooks, will become tainted with the flavor of week old ego.
And maybe that day, you will ask yourself, "So maybe all these *nix guys have it right. They don't get spyware, adware, and viruses. To keep their box secure, all they have to do is disable outside accessable ports."
Since it's been mentioned, I'm considering putting antispyware on the machine immediately to my right. But I'm writing this from my Linux machine, where I don't worry that a piece of spyware may have just captured my Slashdot user:pass.
I've been using Slackupdate for a while, with great success. It appears to do pretty much the same thing. I have mine set up to hit my own repository, rather than the public ones. No need to abuse other people's networks with all my servers needing updates.
For some of us, it really doesn't matter.:) Once I get an install done, I build my own kernel. I'm one of those people who like building nice stable kernels with no modules, and only the drivers required for the machine.
As a matter of fact, I just got done putting 2.6.10 on a Slack 9.1 box. I would have upgraded it first, but I wanted to get it, and the 10.1 disks are still downloading.
I got sucked into last season's finale, but it felt so freakin' dragged out. At least it seemed better than the previous seasons, where I had absolutely no urge to watch.
I was thrown by the end of last season though. They lead into this season, but seemed to completely drop that idea. I wanted to see Archer in the Alien/Nazi camp, and I wanted to see how they had screwed up history. I do understand that they have to stay within the limits of pre-defined Star Trek history, so can't rewrite much history.
Hopefully, if they do another series (I'm sure they will), they won't put themselves into such a situation.
And for those comparing Star Trek to SG1, well, they both suck lately. I still record them on my TiVO, but if I watch them the whole way through is another matter.
I read the comments on both the linked site, and here. It seems that a lot of people haven't actually read the books. I've read them a few times. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy here right now, or I'd quote from it. I've bought several over the years, but the seem to get 'borrowed' and never returned.
In the preface of one edition, Mr. Adams says something to the effect that the radio show was just something they threw together for fun. The book was the radio show, but they switched around the episodes to make the chapters, and changed plenty of things. The television show was the low-budget attempt to visualize it, poking fun at himself through the whole thing. The game was yet another scrambled attempt.
I'd fully expect the movie to be different than the radio show or the book. It's the way he would have wanted it. Every version of the story has been different, why should this one follow verbatum in the footprints of the previous?
I've listened to parts of the radio show, read all the books a few times, and watched the television series. I even beat the game when I was a kid on my old Apple IIe.
Now for the flame bait.
Books and movies will always be different. There are particular things you simply can't illustrate in either medium. The best example I can think of for this was on the "Stargate" Lowdown, on the SciFi channel. The actors were suppose to be looking at this giant spaceship taking off, and being amazed by how huge it was. They were really looking at a blue screen. The script just said a "really big spaceship". After the special effects guys got done with it, they were like "Ooohhh, a *REALLY* big spaceship". The visual effects were more dramatic than what they imagined from the written word on the script.
When you read a book, your imagination fills in all the blanks. What is a "really scary ugly monster"? They can go into details of arms, legs, eyes, size, etc. But, until you see something like the monster on Aliens, you didn't understand, "Oh, *REALLY* scary ugly monster.".
To one person, the movie may be tremendous, because they didn't imagine so deeply. To some, it may not be as great. I'm impressed by seeing what other people have put together. Sure, there are plenty of movies that I think absolutely sucked. I saw "Darkness" a few weeks ago. I kept waiting for it to get good. But I'm sure there are plenty of people who liked it.
Plenty of the science fiction that I like, bore the shit out of other people. I grasp ideas that they try to throw around as truth, while some people draw a blank at the idea of alternate dimensions, or the fabric of space. "Fabric? There's a t-shirt holding the universe together?" Some people are confused by the fact that light is influenced by gravity.
HHGTTG is just fun. Hmmm, the earth is blown up by big green construction workers, and a couple guys using a thing shaped like a thumb hop up to a spaceship, are thrown into space, and land on another spaceship with an Infinite Improbability Drive powered by a cup of tea, stolen by a drunkard two headed party animal who just happened to be the president of the universe? It's not serious, its humor.
I look forward to watching the movie. Too bad I wasn't invited to the preview, I'm only a few miles away from Pasadena.
Assuming you're on a Linux machine, do PPP over SSH. Plenty of people will say it's slow, but I've been using it very successfully for several months on high speed connections (> 2Mb/s). The only time I've had problems is when the connection goes down, but hey, that's the problem.:)
I found this script somewhere on the 'net, and made adjustments. It's not perfect, but it works for me, so I have no grand plans for making more changes.
You'll need to have SSH keys set up between where you are, and a server on a 'friendly' network. This will route *ALL* of your traffic, over SSH, through the remote host. Nothing you do will be seen. It'll all be encrypted SSH traffic. I use a different port for SSH, so it's not even recognized as SSH traffic. For all they know, it could be music streaming or something.:)
--- begin rc.firewall (for the server) #!/bin/tcsh # not all of this is necessary. Play with it a bit. #!/bin/tcsh
# A simple rc.firewall to start NAT. echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT iptables -F INPUT iptables -F OUTPUT iptables -F FORWARD iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o ppp+ -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT iptables -A FORWARD -i ppp+ -o eth0 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
--- end rc.firewall
--- begin ppptunnel.pl #!/usr/bin/perl
# # there should be no/etc/ppp/options on either the server or the client. #
$localip="1.2.3.4"; # first ip on net $localmask="255.255.255.0"; # 16 ips $remoteip="1.2.3.5"; # other end of link $ssh="/usr/bin/ssh"; $pppd="/usr/sbin/pppd"; $sshuser="my_vpn_user"; # The remote user, who has SSH keys set up. $sshhost="1.2.3.4";
foreach $maj ("p".."s") { # adjust this to the ptys you have foreach $min ("0".."9", "a".."f") { print "Trying $maj$min\n"; &tryopen("$maj$min"); } } die "Couldn't alloc pty\n";
sub tryopen { local($d)=@_;
if (open(PTY, "+>/dev/pty$d")) { print "Opened/dev/pty$d\n"; $pid=fork; defined($pid) || die "can't fork";
if ($pid) { #parent print "Parent...\n"; open(STDIN, "<&PTY") || die "reopen stdin"; open(STDOUT, ">&PTY") || die "reopen stout"; close PTY; print STDERR "running on tty$d; ssh=$$, pppd=$pid\n"; #system $ssh, "-vt", "-l$sshuser", "vpn", "sudo/sbin/route delete $localip"; #-f -x -t $c = "$ssh -tx -l$sshuser $sshhost \"sudo/usr/sbin/pppd passive\""; print STDERR "Executing $c\n"; exec "$c"; die "exec $ssh: $!";
I'm saying that it's security through obscurity. If they find a flaw the company does on every installation, then that same flaw will be present in my house. For example, a common passcode that disables the alarm system, or like I used in my previous example, the fact that they always skip a particular room or area. That wouldn't be present in my own installation. Home security isn't rocket science. I won't say anyone can do it, but if you really think about it, it's not very hard. What are the possible entrances? Doors, windows, access panels, and skylights. How do you want to secure them? NO and NC switches and sensors? Motion sensors? A combination of both?
Of course, I am the type of person who has done this before.
The story was about exactly this though. People trusted that these security devices were secure, but now you find that you didn't secure anything. Not only that, you've given up all your security to anyone who may stumble across your security cameras. Now I, from the comfort of my own home, through a proxy (or series of proxies) anywhere in the world, can watch your staff movements in detail, and record it all for later viewing.
Is your school, home, or business really secure, if I can see all the human traffic in the building? I may know that you don't have night security, or that they stop by 4 times a night, and at what times. I may find out that the alarms trip themselves in the rain and are ignored. I may find that you have no security and are completely dependant on the cameras. So, if I were to disable the cameras, and go in on a Friday night, by Monday morning, you may find that your business is empty..
On the other hand, if the cameras had been secured, at best I'd know that you have cameras, but have no way of knowing what they show.
Funny thing about that though. When other people start knowing your work, they also know what you miss. The company you choose may leave one seemingly insignificant hole open all the time, and someone like me will come through and exploit it in every one of their customers installations..
That's annoying for Internet stuff. That's costly for alarm systems. We'll use your office alarm system as an example. I may know that an installer doesn't thing twice about maintaince closets, bathrooms, or drop ceiling crawl spaces. So I enter one business through the bathroom, get into the crawlspace, disable the alarm from the wires very nicely run up into the ceiling, and away goes the alarm. Then I do it to another business. And another..
Or, I've installed the alarm myself. Because it's my business I'm securing, I go all out putting motion sensors in every room and space. Anywhere there's a potential hole in the concrete. I put sensors on every door and window. I give it a cell phone notification backup. I get it hooked up with a 24 hour response company, plus have it page me.
Who's place is going to be harder to break into? Yours, where a company did it, or mine?
Yours is one of the pre-built boxes or cameras that are now being featured in the parent story. Mine is running quietly in my office, and the cameras haven't been slashdotted.
You haven't dealt with many users, have you?:) That big sticker is either going to be completely ignored, or the first thing that gets yanked off and thrown away. Or worse, some rocket scientist will install all of them in places that are virtually inaccessable, and not write down the passwords first.
I did have some Axis boxes at one point. They were the much older ones.. They had a bad habit of dying.. I was smart about it though, I put everything on a private network, and wrote my own software solution to get the feed from the camera to distribution servers. The Axis box had exactly one connection, and the distribution servers had tens of thousands. I tried other solutions, and was pretty happy with some regular PC's, cheap capture cards and USB devices, and more of my own software.
Say hello to your Google toolbar, any piece of Spyware that shares information with Google, or even your Gmail account. Does the largest search engine necessarly play by all the rules? Nope. They're in the business of information collection. They may **SAY** they do no evil, but they're a business, and businesses are interested in exactly one thing, profit.
Google has no way to find a site, unless you give them the information. For example, your personal server. If you didn't even use a FQDN, but you browsed to it as http://1.2.3.4/~user. Google toolbar sends that back to them. That piece of spyware you didn't know about sends it to whereever, or you've done something stupid, like have a link to Google, and they picked it up from that.
Since most people do virtual hostings, it's kinda worthless to try spidering every IP on the Internet. Sure, you could, but then you'd have a whole bunch of crap results.
Curious to see which is right? Set up a sub-domains ([something].example.com), each with a seperate logfile. Put a link to Google in one. Browse to that one, and another. Send someone @gmail.com an Email about the 3rd. Leave the 4th completely alone. I'd be willing to bet you'll see traffic on the first three. In any case, you'll know what they're watching. Then ask yourself, how much does Google really need to know about your habits.. I'd be willing to bet they have filters in place for interesting URL's, and interesting emails.
I blew off a built-up Chevelle like it was standing still, and we won't even go into the Mustangs.. I don't bother play with them, because it's not worth wasting the gas.:)
Well, we have the same car.. Mine is a '00 WS6 . This is a recent picture of them. The pewter is the '00 WS6. The green one is a '98 regular T/A (V8, automatic)
I bought the '00, because I wanted a stick. The dealership did a search, and it was the only stick available. Oohh, the pain. I have to suffer with the extra features.:)
I think my cruising milage was better than yours, because I was going faster.. It wasn't running hard at 80-85mph, and I was in 6th the whole time.. At the time, it was unmodified.
To get the most accurate mileage estimate, start with a full tank. Then write down every fuel stop, and the mileage. Use a much longer sample, to get the better estimate. My 26mpg estimate is based on driving 2500 miles, documenting everything. There were spots where I know I used more gas, like when I hit traffic, but overall it was 26mpg.
I still estimate my fuel consumption on every fuel stop. I reset my trip gauge, and use that to compare to the fuel purchased. Not as precise as a longer sample, but it's still good.
I still get 24 on a fairly regular basis. I can see there's a difference when I hit traffic, or start messing with people. It's really driving habits.
The '98, shown in the picture, passed 150mph on Gandy bridge in Tampa. It's perfectly flat, no tail wind, and a few miles of bridge before you have to slow down or risk getting busted for speeding. It only has 275hp stock. I've blown through 150 with the '00, but haven't had an opportunity to run it up to it's fastest. I'd like to video tape the gauges, so I can calculate my full speed based on the RPM's, or maybe let a GPS calculate it for me (or both)
In my '82 Firebird, with a transplanted '79 4 bolt main 350, I could get up to about 18mpg, because of the crap gearing, but if I was racing, I would get 6 gallons per mile. That was measured on a track.:) It was at Sebring, if memory serves me right, on their 3/8 mile oval track, during "spectator" races.. Literally, you'd run the 3/8, and re-enter the pits to line up for the next elimination. I did several of those, and got to the final race, where it was 2 laps long. I sucked up 1/2 a tank of gas, and had to refill to go home.
The '82 had a top speed of 130, which was 6000 RPM in 4th gear.
What have you done to yours? Here's my short list:
Removed ram air dampers
removed MAF screen
replaced MAF -> throttle body tube
strut tower brace (not like that matters for efficency)
racing clutch (stock didn't survive because of NOS, which I list soon)
Hurst shifter. The original owner didn't order it, bastard.
Hypertech power programmer.
Bridgestone Potenza 275 40 ZR 17 tires. They may not sound like the greatest tire, but damn, these are the stickiest tires I've ever used.. AA traction rating, and they've lasted longer than the stock tires.
A few weeks ago, I went for California emissions, and had to pull my NOS system off. dry system, jetted for 150HP.. That's what blew out the stock clutch. I'm probably going to rig it up for quick disconnects, so I can put it on for racing, and take it off for street driving. A few people have warned me that if I'm caught with it on, on the streets, I'd lose my car, which I'm not willing to do.
I can feel a bit of body flex, so next I'm going for nice subframe connectors. The ones that go to front and back mount points, plus the tranny crossmember. They're on eBay for like $160.
Then I'm considering either doing heads and cam, or going all out and stroking it to 383. I know, strokers don't have the RPM's like a short throw does, but we're only turning 6k, not pushing 10k like other smallblocks I've worked on (strictly racing cars).
I can feel I have more power than stock, but I don't try to estimate that it's too much h
I beg to argue. Well, obviously you've never driven a TransAm WS6 or a Camaro SS. They're much more nimble than even their lower namesakes. My car stops on a dime. I scared a guy one day, coming across the end of 1/4 at over 100 (can't remember exactly how fast, it's been a while), and making their first turnout, without the ABS kicking in.
I've danced around idiots who think they should have been in my lane suddenly. I've driven quite a few cars in my time. Like, if it's been made from the late 70's up, I've probably driven one.
I've also been in a few... altercations... with TransAm's. How's 40mph into the side of a pickup sound for you? That was in a 3rd gen Firebird. The truck ran a stop sign, and ended up stopped across a busy 4 lane road. I hit his driver side rear tire, blew out the tire, bent the frame, and spun him across the road.. My car needed some body work, but it wasn't a total.
A friend took the liberty of having an altercation with my '98 TransAm. 50mph into a parked SUV. She walked away with bruises. She didn't drive my cars after that.
Could you drive an Echo at 50mph into a parked car? Could you walk away? My car needed some body work, a new rim, and radiator.
Dude, they're bragging up the amazing power of... a Toyota..
I'm saying, I'm a consumer. If they're going to try to impress me with the power of it, they'd damned well impress me with the power of it.
Now, if you want to say the T/A is a fake muscle car, bring it out to the track buddy.. I've shown more than one person what's muscle and what's not.. I've eaten up Porsches, Corvettes, Mustangs, and just last week I embarassed the shit out of some guy in an Acura NSX. The only car I've riden in that could take me was a modified Z06. That was a fun car to ride in on the track.
Dude, just because you've never dated a girl in your life, and you just turned 40, doesn't mean everyone on here is just like you.
I've dated a wonderful variety of women, including my beautiful ex, who still drives her Camaro SS every day..
I'd offer up a picture of her with the car, but I don't want to give a lonely pervert like you any masturbation material. Damn, go get yourself a penthouse or something.
This one is 325hp stock, but it's the stick with T-Tops. I have a '98 TransAm (not WS6), with an auto, that does like yours..
The ragtop isn't quite as aerodynamic as T-tops or a hard top either, which hurts you in high speed, and a little in fuel effeciency. There's a difference between running with the tops down and the windows open, compared to with all the glass closed.
Generally, I expect 24mpg with a mix of city and highway driving. I get 26 on long trips. That's putting it up in 6th, setting the cruse to 85mph, and waiting for the next 4+ hours to pass..
You totally right on the fun part though. I was in 4th on the highway the other day, and needed to zip around some slow cars fairly quickly. I just nudged the gas, and the speed went up by 30mph without shifting. In any small car that I've driven (including a Sunfire GT), that doesn't happen. Hell, in the Mustang GT's I've driven, they don't even jump when told to.
Your Z28 will get some speed going. My '98 TransAm (not WS6), I got just over 150mph. I ran out of road before I got to see what it's real max speed was.. The '00 WS6, well, it's still accelerating hard when you get up there.:) It's hard to find enough road to hold over 150 for very long.. 150 is one mile every 24 seconds. Woosh!:) Lanes get very narrow, and stuff in the distance comes up very quickly.
I like the TransAm much better. My ex-girlfriend has the '00 Camaro SS. Stock, they were about the same to drive, except when we test drove hers, it still had stock tires, and I already had sticky tires..
The biggest differences were the fact that mine (The TransAm) has the Monsoon sound system. 10 speakers, and a nice radio. Hers had the traction control, but I turn that off as soon as I sit down. It seriously hurts the performance. Lovely for keeping you stuck to a wet road with stock tires, but terrible for hard acceleration.
Gotta love a cute girl that's into muscle cars. Damn, why am I not with her now??
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still looking for the good solution to getting my DirecTivo on the network. I have the O'Reilly Hacking TiVo book, but I never managed to get a bash prompt out of it. The drive upgrade went very smoothly though. I have TV shows from mid-december still recorded. I spent part of yesterday watching old Twilight Zone reruns.
If anyone has real hints on getting HMO or the networking hacks going on a DirecTivo (HDVR2), I'd appreciate it. And no, I won't go with the other device options. I'm very fond of the TiVo, even if I can't play with it via my computer.
Two people have ever asked me to give them a copy of a show that I had recorded on TiVo. In both cases, they missed the show for some reason. I'm not set up to copy the shows off, so they were both out of luck.
Another friend set my TiVo to record their shows for them, in case they missed it at home. They can just come over at their leasure, and watch it here.
Piracy? Not really, everything's been on broadcast TV. I'm not removing the commercials, and really it makes for one extra viewer of those commercials.
If I could send the shows over to them easier, then that would still increase the viewer base of both the show and commercials.
Any argument against TiVo is the same crap that went on with the invention of the VCR. Oohh ya, that was the end of technology, wasn't it?
I don't watch the commercials on my TiVo. Fast forward, skip, or more commonly ignore them. Advertisments are a nice time to go get a drink, or something. Of course, I do find that it's interesting that I watch 1 hour shows in just about 30 minutes from most stations. It's almost to the point of having a little bit of television mixed in with all the advertisments.
You have to watch being that cocky.
When you're *so* sure that you're so safe, that's the day some piece of spyware is going to sneak in through a new MSIE exploit, log all your passwords, find all your credit credit card numbers, and swoosh them off to some hacker in [insert evil country here], where they'll proceed to read your webmail, buy porn and money orders with your credit cards, and lock you out of everything you do online.
Every time I look at a Windows machine, I ask myself, "Is this machine safe?" The answer is very rarely "yes".
What's more fun is the expression on your face next week. It's usually just about a week after you feel all cocky about something, that it'll come back to bite you. You'll end up turning to a friend like me (not me, but someone who knows their shit), and asking for help. That smug smile that you're wearing now, as you talk about the 59 Win32 hooks, will become tainted with the flavor of week old ego.
And maybe that day, you will ask yourself, "So maybe all these *nix guys have it right. They don't get spyware, adware, and viruses. To keep their box secure, all they have to do is disable outside accessable ports."
Since it's been mentioned, I'm considering putting antispyware on the machine immediately to my right. But I'm writing this from my Linux machine, where I don't worry that a piece of spyware may have just captured my Slashdot user:pass.
I could.
I've been using Slackupdate for a while, with great success. It appears to do pretty much the same thing. I have mine set up to hit my own repository, rather than the public ones. No need to abuse other people's networks with all my servers needing updates.
For some of us, it really doesn't matter.
As a matter of fact, I just got done putting 2.6.10 on a Slack 9.1 box. I would have upgraded it first, but I wanted to get it, and the 10.1 disks are still downloading.
$100 per hour, no fractional hours.
The only exceptions is, if it's for a friend, and they're giving me beer and food, then the cost is beer and food.
Mmmmmmm.. The infomercial channel. When will they start that here in the states?
You're optimistic. That would be premium space. It'd be dominated by Coke-Cola, Nike, and the like.
I got sucked into last season's finale, but it felt so freakin' dragged out. At least it seemed better than the previous seasons, where I had absolutely no urge to watch.
I was thrown by the end of last season though. They lead into this season, but seemed to completely drop that idea. I wanted to see Archer in the Alien/Nazi camp, and I wanted to see how they had screwed up history. I do understand that they have to stay within the limits of pre-defined Star Trek history, so can't rewrite much history.
Hopefully, if they do another series (I'm sure they will), they won't put themselves into such a situation.
And for those comparing Star Trek to SG1, well, they both suck lately. I still record them on my TiVO, but if I watch them the whole way through is another matter.
Ok, here's my flame bait for the year.
I read the comments on both the linked site, and here. It seems that a lot of people haven't actually read the books. I've read them a few times. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy here right now, or I'd quote from it. I've bought several over the years, but the seem to get 'borrowed' and never returned.
In the preface of one edition, Mr. Adams says something to the effect that the radio show was just something they threw together for fun. The book was the radio show, but they switched around the episodes to make the chapters, and changed plenty of things. The television show was the low-budget attempt to visualize it, poking fun at himself through the whole thing. The game was yet another scrambled attempt.
I'd fully expect the movie to be different than the radio show or the book. It's the way he would have wanted it. Every version of the story has been different, why should this one follow verbatum in the footprints of the previous?
I've listened to parts of the radio show, read all the books a few times, and watched the television series. I even beat the game when I was a kid on my old Apple IIe.
Now for the flame bait.
Books and movies will always be different. There are particular things you simply can't illustrate in either medium. The best example I can think of for this was on the "Stargate" Lowdown, on the SciFi channel. The actors were suppose to be looking at this giant spaceship taking off, and being amazed by how huge it was. They were really looking at a blue screen. The script just said a "really big spaceship". After the special effects guys got done with it, they were like "Ooohhh, a *REALLY* big spaceship". The visual effects were more dramatic than what they imagined from the written word on the script.
When you read a book, your imagination fills in all the blanks. What is a "really scary ugly monster"? They can go into details of arms, legs, eyes, size, etc. But, until you see something like the monster on Aliens, you didn't understand, "Oh, *REALLY* scary ugly monster.".
To one person, the movie may be tremendous, because they didn't imagine so deeply. To some, it may not be as great. I'm impressed by seeing what other people have put together. Sure, there are plenty of movies that I think absolutely sucked. I saw "Darkness" a few weeks ago. I kept waiting for it to get good. But I'm sure there are plenty of people who liked it.
Plenty of the science fiction that I like, bore the shit out of other people. I grasp ideas that they try to throw around as truth, while some people draw a blank at the idea of alternate dimensions, or the fabric of space. "Fabric? There's a t-shirt holding the universe together?" Some people are confused by the fact that light is influenced by gravity.
HHGTTG is just fun. Hmmm, the earth is blown up by big green construction workers, and a couple guys using a thing shaped like a thumb hop up to a spaceship, are thrown into space, and land on another spaceship with an Infinite Improbability Drive powered by a cup of tea, stolen by a drunkard two headed party animal who just happened to be the president of the universe? It's not serious, its humor.
I look forward to watching the movie. Too bad I wasn't invited to the preview, I'm only a few miles away from Pasadena.
Assuming you're on a Linux machine, do PPP over SSH. Plenty of people will say it's slow, but I've been using it very successfully for several months on high speed connections (> 2Mb/s). The only time I've had problems is when the connection goes down, but hey, that's the problem. :)
:)
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
/etc/ppp/options on either the server or the client.
;
/dev/pty$d\n";
/sbin/route delete $localip"; /usr/sbin/pppd passive\"";
/dev/tty$d defaultroute local proxyarp ktune";
I found this script somewhere on the 'net, and made adjustments. It's not perfect, but it works for me, so I have no grand plans for making more changes.
You'll need to have SSH keys set up between where you are, and a server on a 'friendly' network. This will route *ALL* of your traffic, over SSH, through the remote host. Nothing you do will be seen. It'll all be encrypted SSH traffic. I use a different port for SSH, so it's not even recognized as SSH traffic. For all they know, it could be music streaming or something.
--- begin rc.firewall (for the server)
#!/bin/tcsh
# not all of this is necessary. Play with it a bit.
#!/bin/tcsh
# A simple rc.firewall to start NAT.
echo 1 >
iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
iptables -F INPUT
iptables -F OUTPUT
iptables -F FORWARD
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o ppp+ -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i ppp+ -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
--- end rc.firewall
--- begin ppptunnel.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# there should be no
#
$localip="1.2.3.4"; # first ip on net
$localmask="255.255.255.0"; # 16 ips
$remoteip="1.2.3.5"; # other end of link
$ssh="/usr/bin/ssh";
$pppd="/usr/sbin/pppd"
$sshuser="my_vpn_user"; # The remote user, who has SSH keys set up.
$sshhost="1.2.3.4";
foreach $maj ("p".."s") { # adjust this to the ptys you have
foreach $min ("0".."9", "a".."f") {
print "Trying $maj$min\n";
&tryopen("$maj$min");
}
}
die "Couldn't alloc pty\n";
sub tryopen
{
local($d)=@_;
if (open(PTY, "+>/dev/pty$d")) {
print "Opened
$pid=fork;
defined($pid) || die "can't fork";
if ($pid) { #parent
print "Parent...\n";
open(STDIN, "<&PTY") || die "reopen stdin";
open(STDOUT, ">&PTY") || die "reopen stout";
close PTY;
print STDERR "running on tty$d; ssh=$$, pppd=$pid\n";
#system $ssh, "-vt", "-l$sshuser", "vpn", "sudo
#-f -x -t
$c = "$ssh -tx -l$sshuser $sshhost \"sudo
print STDERR "Executing $c\n";
exec "$c";
die "exec $ssh: $!";
} else { #child
print "Child...\n";
close PTY;
sleep 5;
print "Modifying routes\n";
$old_def_route = `route -n | grep ^0.0.0.0 | cut -c 17- | cut -f 1 -d ' '`;
chop ($old_def_route);
$c = "route add -host $sshhost gw $old_def_route";
print "Route: $c\n";
system("$c");
$c = "route del default gw $old_def_route";
print "Route: $c\n";
system("$c");
print "starting pppd\n";
$c = "$pppd
# exec $pppd, "/dev/tty$d", "defaultroute", "local", "debug", \
# "netmask", "$localmask", "$localip:$remoteip";
exec "$c";
die "exec $pppd: $!";
}
}
}
print "Switching default route back to it's original\n";
$c = "route add default gw $old_def_route netmask 0.0.0.0 metric 1";
system("$c");
--- end ppptunnel.pl
If the link comes up, you'll see a ppp0 device on your machine (not the server). Do some traceroutes to verify you
I'm saying that it's security through obscurity. If they find a flaw the company does on every installation, then that same flaw will be present in my house. For example, a common passcode that disables the alarm system, or like I used in my previous example, the fact that they always skip a particular room or area. That wouldn't be present in my own installation. Home security isn't rocket science. I won't say anyone can do it, but if you really think about it, it's not very hard. What are the possible entrances? Doors, windows, access panels, and skylights. How do you want to secure them? NO and NC switches and sensors? Motion sensors? A combination of both?
Of course, I am the type of person who has done this before.
The story was about exactly this though. People trusted that these security devices were secure, but now you find that you didn't secure anything. Not only that, you've given up all your security to anyone who may stumble across your security cameras. Now I, from the comfort of my own home, through a proxy (or series of proxies) anywhere in the world, can watch your staff movements in detail, and record it all for later viewing.
Is your school, home, or business really secure, if I can see all the human traffic in the building? I may know that you don't have night security, or that they stop by 4 times a night, and at what times. I may find out that the alarms trip themselves in the rain and are ignored. I may find that you have no security and are completely dependant on the cameras. So, if I were to disable the cameras, and go in on a Friday night, by Monday morning, you may find that your business is empty..
On the other hand, if the cameras had been secured, at best I'd know that you have cameras, but have no way of knowing what they show.
Funny thing about that though. When other people start knowing your work, they also know what you miss. The company you choose may leave one seemingly insignificant hole open all the time, and someone like me will come through and exploit it in every one of their customers installations..
That's annoying for Internet stuff. That's costly for alarm systems. We'll use your office alarm system as an example. I may know that an installer doesn't thing twice about maintaince closets, bathrooms, or drop ceiling crawl spaces. So I enter one business through the bathroom, get into the crawlspace, disable the alarm from the wires very nicely run up into the ceiling, and away goes the alarm. Then I do it to another business. And another..
Or, I've installed the alarm myself. Because it's my business I'm securing, I go all out putting motion sensors in every room and space. Anywhere there's a potential hole in the concrete. I put sensors on every door and window. I give it a cell phone notification backup. I get it hooked up with a 24 hour response company, plus have it page me.
Who's place is going to be harder to break into? Yours, where a company did it, or mine?
Yours is one of the pre-built boxes or cameras that are now being featured in the parent story. Mine is running quietly in my office, and the cameras haven't been slashdotted.
You haven't dealt with many users, have you? :) That big sticker is either going to be completely ignored, or the first thing that gets yanked off and thrown away. Or worse, some rocket scientist will install all of them in places that are virtually inaccessable, and not write down the passwords first.
I did have some Axis boxes at one point. They were the much older ones.. They had a bad habit of dying.. I was smart about it though, I put everything on a private network, and wrote my own software solution to get the feed from the camera to distribution servers. The Axis box had exactly one connection, and the distribution servers had tens of thousands. I tried other solutions, and was pretty happy with some regular PC's, cheap capture cards and USB devices, and more of my own software.
I did that once. Didn't work very well. She went for a swim, and sunk to the bottom.
It's a terrible shame the tragic accidents my wives came to. hehe.
(to all my future ex-wives reading this, I'm just kidding!!)
Say hello to your Google toolbar, any piece of Spyware that shares information with Google, or even your Gmail account. Does the largest search engine necessarly play by all the rules? Nope. They're in the business of information collection. They may **SAY** they do no evil, but they're a business, and businesses are interested in exactly one thing, profit.
Google has no way to find a site, unless you give them the information. For example, your personal server. If you didn't even use a FQDN, but you browsed to it as http://1.2.3.4/~user. Google toolbar sends that back to them. That piece of spyware you didn't know about sends it to whereever, or you've done something stupid, like have a link to Google, and they picked it up from that.
Since most people do virtual hostings, it's kinda worthless to try spidering every IP on the Internet. Sure, you could, but then you'd have a whole bunch of crap results.
Curious to see which is right? Set up a sub-domains ([something].example.com), each with a seperate logfile. Put a link to Google in one. Browse to that one, and another. Send someone @gmail.com an Email about the 3rd. Leave the 4th completely alone. I'd be willing to bet you'll see traffic on the first three. In any case, you'll know what they're watching. Then ask yourself, how much does Google really need to know about your habits.. I'd be willing to bet they have filters in place for interesting URL's, and interesting emails.
At least some of us aren't on Windows. :)
user @ amd64 (/user) cal 4 2029
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Well, they're considered fast..
I blew off a built-up Chevelle like it was standing still, and we won't even go into the Mustangs.. I don't bother play with them, because it's not worth wasting the gas.
Well, we have the same car.. Mine is a '00 WS6 . This is a recent picture of them. The pewter is the '00 WS6. The green one is a '98 regular T/A (V8, automatic)
I bought the '00, because I wanted a stick. The dealership did a search, and it was the only stick available. Oohh, the pain. I have to suffer with the extra features.
I think my cruising milage was better than yours, because I was going faster.. It wasn't running hard at 80-85mph, and I was in 6th the whole time.. At the time, it was unmodified.
To get the most accurate mileage estimate, start with a full tank. Then write down every fuel stop, and the mileage. Use a much longer sample, to get the better estimate. My 26mpg estimate is based on driving 2500 miles, documenting everything. There were spots where I know I used more gas, like when I hit traffic, but overall it was 26mpg.
I still estimate my fuel consumption on every fuel stop. I reset my trip gauge, and use that to compare to the fuel purchased. Not as precise as a longer sample, but it's still good.
I still get 24 on a fairly regular basis. I can see there's a difference when I hit traffic, or start messing with people. It's really driving habits.
The '98, shown in the picture, passed 150mph on Gandy bridge in Tampa. It's perfectly flat, no tail wind, and a few miles of bridge before you have to slow down or risk getting busted for speeding. It only has 275hp stock. I've blown through 150 with the '00, but haven't had an opportunity to run it up to it's fastest. I'd like to video tape the gauges, so I can calculate my full speed based on the RPM's, or maybe let a GPS calculate it for me (or both)
In my '82 Firebird, with a transplanted '79 4 bolt main 350, I could get up to about 18mpg, because of the crap gearing, but if I was racing, I would get 6 gallons per mile. That was measured on a track.
The '82 had a top speed of 130, which was 6000 RPM in 4th gear.
What have you done to yours? Here's my short list:
Removed ram air dampers
removed MAF screen
replaced MAF -> throttle body tube
strut tower brace (not like that matters for efficency)
racing clutch (stock didn't survive because of NOS, which I list soon)
Hurst shifter. The original owner didn't order it, bastard.
Hypertech power programmer.
Bridgestone Potenza 275 40 ZR 17 tires. They may not sound like the greatest tire, but damn, these are the stickiest tires I've ever used.. AA traction rating, and they've lasted longer than the stock tires.
A few weeks ago, I went for California emissions, and had to pull my NOS system off. dry system, jetted for 150HP.. That's what blew out the stock clutch. I'm probably going to rig it up for quick disconnects, so I can put it on for racing, and take it off for street driving. A few people have warned me that if I'm caught with it on, on the streets, I'd lose my car, which I'm not willing to do.
I can feel a bit of body flex, so next I'm going for nice subframe connectors. The ones that go to front and back mount points, plus the tranny crossmember. They're on eBay for like $160.
Then I'm considering either doing heads and cam, or going all out and stroking it to 383. I know, strokers don't have the RPM's like a short throw does, but we're only turning 6k, not pushing 10k like other smallblocks I've worked on (strictly racing cars).
I can feel I have more power than stock, but I don't try to estimate that it's too much h
Just once, I think.. Occasionally, I go looking for advice on what to modify next, but generally I already know.. :)
I beg to argue. Well, obviously you've never driven a TransAm WS6 or a Camaro SS. They're much more nimble than even their lower namesakes. My car stops on a dime. I scared a guy one day, coming across the end of 1/4 at over 100 (can't remember exactly how fast, it's been a while), and making their first turnout, without the ABS kicking in.
I've danced around idiots who think they should have been in my lane suddenly. I've driven quite a few cars in my time. Like, if it's been made from the late 70's up, I've probably driven one.
I've also been in a few
A friend took the liberty of having an altercation with my '98 TransAm. 50mph into a parked SUV. She walked away with bruises. She didn't drive my cars after that.
Could you drive an Echo at 50mph into a parked car? Could you walk away? My car needed some body work, a new rim, and radiator.
Dude, they're bragging up the amazing power of
I'm saying, I'm a consumer. If they're going to try to impress me with the power of it, they'd damned well impress me with the power of it.
Now, if you want to say the T/A is a fake muscle car, bring it out to the track buddy.. I've shown more than one person what's muscle and what's not.. I've eaten up Porsches, Corvettes, Mustangs, and just last week I embarassed the shit out of some guy in an Acura NSX. The only car I've riden in that could take me was a modified Z06. That was a fun car to ride in on the track.
Dude, just because you've never dated a girl in your life, and you just turned 40, doesn't mean everyone on here is just like you.
I've dated a wonderful variety of women, including my beautiful ex, who still drives her Camaro SS every day..
I'd offer up a picture of her with the car, but I don't want to give a lonely pervert like you any masturbation material. Damn, go get yourself a penthouse or something.
This one is 325hp stock, but it's the stick with T-Tops. I have a '98 TransAm (not WS6), with an auto, that does like yours..
:) It's hard to find enough road to hold over 150 for very long.. 150 is one mile every 24 seconds. Woosh! :) Lanes get very narrow, and stuff in the distance comes up very quickly.
The ragtop isn't quite as aerodynamic as T-tops or a hard top either, which hurts you in high speed, and a little in fuel effeciency. There's a difference between running with the tops down and the windows open, compared to with all the glass closed.
Generally, I expect 24mpg with a mix of city and highway driving. I get 26 on long trips. That's putting it up in 6th, setting the cruse to 85mph, and waiting for the next 4+ hours to pass..
You totally right on the fun part though. I was in 4th on the highway the other day, and needed to zip around some slow cars fairly quickly. I just nudged the gas, and the speed went up by 30mph without shifting. In any small car that I've driven (including a Sunfire GT), that doesn't happen. Hell, in the Mustang GT's I've driven, they don't even jump when told to.
Your Z28 will get some speed going. My '98 TransAm (not WS6), I got just over 150mph. I ran out of road before I got to see what it's real max speed was.. The '00 WS6, well, it's still accelerating hard when you get up there.
Here are my two cars.
I like the TransAm much better. My ex-girlfriend has the '00 Camaro SS. Stock, they were about the same to drive, except when we test drove hers, it still had stock tires, and I already had sticky tires..
The biggest differences were the fact that mine (The TransAm) has the Monsoon sound system. 10 speakers, and a nice radio. Hers had the traction control, but I turn that off as soon as I sit down. It seriously hurts the performance. Lovely for keeping you stuck to a wet road with stock tires, but terrible for hard acceleration.
Gotta love a cute girl that's into muscle cars. Damn, why am I not with her now??