In case, like me, you missed the final episode of "The Prisioner" a summary of the final episode and it's issues is available here: Prisioner final episode spoiler and issues
(Grin) It's a sad day when I have to add worring about slashdot flashmobs hitting one of my favorate haunts...
Hehe, actually i'm happy this came out here, if more people knew about places like this, the percieved demand would be greater and more 24x7 shops would open up all over the Silicon valley.
Wow and i thought Voyager was forced to use wormholes to communicate from the Gamma quadrant.
I mean once Lt. Barcley (sent from starfleet headquarters on earth) a series of distorted ampliphied messages off a pulsar and Voyager got it and so learned almost how to build a transwarp engin, but that was only before they learned the problems with phase correction that would distoroy the whole ship and kill everyone onboard.
Well fortunatley THAT screwup was fixed by some judisish volations of the temporal prime directive.
Well eventually (spoiler) they got home safe and sound but im preaty sure this conversation was set before the middle of the last season of ST:Voyager so thats not a problem.
I'm just glad i could bring some sanity to this discussion.
-A geek (Station: KF6VKU) who doesn't use his HAMM licence anymore and sits arround watching Start Trek all day insted.
In case you didn't catch this, its a quote of the song Bilbo sang when taunting the spiders of Mirkwood in "The Hobbit"
(Horrors. I almost wrongly said it was a misquote of a Tom Bombadil song from The Fellowship of the Ring.. Shudder, what a public embarasment THAT would have been...)
Just because I cannot understand a clear and well written technical comment in a field other than my own doesn't mean it shouldn't have a place on Slashdot.
It is through researching and trying to understand posts that that, that I find insperation to increase my understanding of other fields and better myself.
For those few posts which are too much of a stretch, it only adds to my humility and respect that fields other than computers can be just as complex and chalenging.
Instead of whining about the quality of his question, making bad jokes and suggesting poor workarounds like covering the LEDs with duct tape, we should fix the problem. This is Slashdot dammit, where supposedly we have the collective expertise try to make stuff better.
Therefore I thought the only correct solution was, regardless of the time/effort it takes, to re-engineer the devices to meet his fairly reasonable objection to their poor designs. Maybe a general solution could be suggested to overly bright LEDs in general.
I think that some the requirements of such a solution should be: -Varies the intensity of LEDs in existing hardware from full-on to dim to off -Does not interfere with the functionality of the device being modified, retaining the intended diagnostic and current status functionality when desired without further modification. -Works with all existing hardware that have LEDs. -Is low profile enough to fit in small places like inside power supplies and between existing circuit boards and the hole in the case where the LED protrudes. -Skill required and costs should not be a factor unless they are extremely excessive. -It must have an attractive appearance. Ideally the devices should appear almost as good as when they came from the manufacturer.
Desirable requirements include: -Light sensitivity to automatically detect when the room is darkened and dim/disable the LEDs as required. -Centralized control so that one manual action disables all the LEDs on all devices -A programmable interface to a computer (both Linux and windows support) for this centralized control so it can be scheduled by cron jobs, activated by a command line and/or controlled remotely by a web/PHP interface, such interface should have hooks to enable 3rd party Open-source programmers to write control systems and integrate it with whatever program they are working on.
While hardware engineering and case mods is not normally my thing, I have a couple of ideas on how to achieve these requirements.
Here are some ideas to get us started (I'm brainstorming here, so don't ding me to badly for not meeting all my requirements):
-We could solder a resistor inline to the led to dim it in a fixed manner. -We could replace the LEDs with dimmer ones -We could insert a small circuit board with a relay to turn on/off the LEDs. -We could use a 3-position switch/relay to get the 3 states of on/dim/off -We could control this relay with an infrared sensor that only activates when it sees specific pulses. -We could wire a bright IR Led that sends those coded signals to a USB adapter and plug it into a computer and write an open-source control API using some portable language like Java that would be platform agnostic (or just write drivers for both OSes). Source Forge would be a good place for this.
-Alternative solutions for centralized control are probably to be found in the x.25 home control system areas -More expensive control systems are probably to be find using bluetooth and/or WiFi and/or robotics (it turns your devices LEDs off for you).
Any further thoughts, or am I taking this question way too seriously?
Smoothwall is exactly that, a custom Linux distro with boot-from-cd install that only requires you to hit "enter" a couple dozen times to turn any old 2 nic pc into a pre-configured modern firewall with internal NAT and DHCP.
I use it and find it very handy (lots of old PC hardware about)
Slashdot Mirror
In case, like me, you missed the final episode of "The Prisioner" a summary of the final episode and it's issues is available here: Prisioner final episode spoiler and issues
(Grin) It's a sad day when I have to add worring about slashdot flashmobs hitting one of my favorate haunts...
Hehe, actually i'm happy this came out here, if more people knew about places like this, the percieved demand would be greater and
more 24x7 shops would open up all over the Silicon valley.
Wow and i thought Voyager was forced to use wormholes to communicate from the Gamma quadrant.
I mean once Lt. Barcley (sent from starfleet headquarters on earth) a series of distorted ampliphied messages off a pulsar and Voyager got it and so learned almost how to build a transwarp engin, but that was only before they learned the problems with phase correction that would distoroy the whole ship and kill everyone onboard.
Well fortunatley THAT screwup was fixed by some judisish volations of the temporal prime directive.
Well eventually (spoiler) they got home safe and sound but im preaty sure this conversation was set before the middle of the last season of ST:Voyager so thats not a problem.
I'm just glad i could bring some sanity to this discussion.
-A geek (Station: KF6VKU) who doesn't use his HAMM licence anymore and sits arround watching Start Trek all day insted.
In case you didn't catch this, its a quote of the song Bilbo sang when taunting the spiders of Mirkwood in "The Hobbit"
(Horrors. I almost wrongly said it was a misquote of a Tom Bombadil song from The Fellowship of the Ring.. Shudder, what a public embarasment THAT would have been...)
It apears that SCO read your comment, as there is now administrative contact data at that link.
Rats and i was gonna go and pfficially complain too...
I respectfully disagree.
Just because I cannot understand a clear and well written technical comment in a field other than my own doesn't mean it shouldn't have a place on Slashdot.
It is through researching and trying to understand posts that that, that I find insperation to increase my understanding of other fields and better myself.
For those few posts which are too much of a stretch, it only adds to my humility and respect that fields other than computers can be just as complex and chalenging.
Instead of whining about the quality of his question, making bad jokes and suggesting poor workarounds like covering the LEDs with duct tape, we should fix the problem. This is Slashdot dammit, where supposedly we have the collective expertise try to make stuff better.
Therefore I thought the only correct solution was, regardless of the time/effort it takes, to re-engineer the devices to meet his fairly reasonable objection to their poor designs. Maybe a general solution could be suggested to overly bright LEDs in general.
I think that some the requirements of such a solution should be:
-Varies the intensity of LEDs in existing hardware from full-on to dim to off
-Does not interfere with the functionality of the device being modified, retaining the intended diagnostic and current status functionality when desired without further modification.
-Works with all existing hardware that have LEDs.
-Is low profile enough to fit in small places like inside power supplies and between existing circuit boards and the hole in the case where the LED protrudes.
-Skill required and costs should not be a factor unless they are extremely excessive.
-It must have an attractive appearance. Ideally the devices should appear almost as good as when they came from the manufacturer.
Desirable requirements include:
-Light sensitivity to automatically detect when the room is darkened and dim/disable the LEDs as required.
-Centralized control so that one manual action disables all the LEDs on all devices
-A programmable interface to a computer (both Linux and windows support) for this centralized control so it can be scheduled by cron jobs, activated by a command line and/or controlled remotely by a web/PHP interface, such interface should have hooks to enable 3rd party Open-source programmers to write control systems and integrate it with whatever program they are working on.
While hardware engineering and case mods is not normally my thing, I have a couple of ideas on how to achieve these requirements.
Here are some ideas to get us started (I'm brainstorming here, so don't ding me to badly for not meeting all my requirements):
-We could solder a resistor inline to the led to dim it in a fixed manner.
-We could replace the LEDs with dimmer ones
-We could insert a small circuit board with a relay to turn on/off the LEDs.
-We could use a 3-position switch/relay to get the 3 states of on/dim/off
-We could control this relay with an infrared sensor that only activates when it sees specific pulses.
-We could wire a bright IR Led that sends those coded signals to a USB adapter and plug it into a computer and write an open-source control API using some portable language like Java that would be platform agnostic (or just write drivers for both OSes). Source Forge would be a good place for this.
-Alternative solutions for centralized control are probably to be found in the x.25 home control system areas
-More expensive control systems are probably to be find using bluetooth and/or WiFi and/or robotics (it turns your devices LEDs off for you).
Any further thoughts, or am I taking this question way too seriously?
This came up at several past Defcon conventions.
The consensus for the best defence was rather than running complex firewall and host-based protection software, turn the camera to face the wall.
It is currently unbroken and no hacker has yet to figure out a way get past this.*
Personally I think my own defence is even better, I don't own/use a webcam.
* - This defense looses viability if you have a computer controlled webcam mount.
That is just so totally wrong and unrealistic.
It's the top 5 contestants; One for each limb, one for the head and torso consutruction is divided in 5 unequal parts among all 5 robots.
yes you are right - the correct link is:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/
Smoothwall is exactly that, a custom Linux distro with boot-from-cd install that only requires you to hit "enter" a couple dozen times to turn any old 2 nic pc into a pre-configured modern firewall with internal NAT and DHCP.
I use it and find it very handy (lots of old PC hardware about)
Actually I have noticed this too, ive seen about a 30% reduction in the last month, )after a year of steady incraeses) but its going back up now.
It was my impression from the patents I filed that it takes 3-4 years even for "slam-dunk" patents.
First off, there's this giant bureaucratic backlog of things filed and not even looked at, and then they always ask for 2-3 rounds of "clarification".
So even in the best case scenario, the ideas behind most products will only be patented well after the initial product is obsolete.