First, don't allow them to touch a computer at all.
Give them a problem, a real problem - not "print 'Hello World' on the screen" but something they actually have to think about, that has steps. Nothing abstract, something to the point - fuck, give them a math problem if you have to (ooh... this could be evil, but you could throw a semi-simple algebra problem at them! "How would you figure out what number x would be in the problem 17 + 2x = 42?") - and make them figure it out. Make them work out all the steps that would have to be done to solve the problem (sure, it's not too many, but make them break it down). Give them hints, of course, but let them all try to figure out how it works.
NEXT pick a language - I think BASIC is probably a good place to start, for simplicitie's sake. If you think they're really bright and want to give them a nice challenge, throw Perl, Python or Java at them. Give them a good overview of the language's functions and operators, show them a few sample programs, and let them tweak them around to get a feel for things. Then tell them to write a program that will allow them to solve your math problem, but that they have to do it all in variables.
Something along the lines of:
a = 17
b = 2
c = 42
c - a = d
d / b = e
print e
would be expected. Now have them turn the variables into numbers they can input. Now that they have an idea about breaking things down, give them other problems (math or otherwise). As much like a 'good idea' (because they'd be so interested, of course) you'd think that having them design and implement a game is - I don't think it's a good idea. For just starting out, that's a lot of work, and totally unexpected problems can and will arise. Some simple games may be okay (think Hangman, but counting down chances instead of showing a figure - unless your students are exceptionally bright).
If you've got a good deal of time with them - change it up. Make them start a new language. The meat is all the same, the way you go about it is just a little different. Every language has its own positive aspects, things it should be used for, and things it's probably a better idea not to. Procedural languages would be harder to do something like Hangman in (at least, after you've got a good grip on OO-programming techniques), but for just adding a few numbers and spitting out a result, procedural programming will save you a lot of time.
After a little bit of work, start introducing things like arrays and hashes (if your language of choice supports them), queues and stacks and such. Above all, show them reasons to use them, don't just say "this is a stack" and expect them to start coming up with useful things to do with it. It's a little abstract, and an example or 10 will go a long way.
Going purely by the numbers, I believe that the possible combinations for a 128-bit security system would be 3.4028236692093846346337460743177 * 10^38
On the contrast, a 64-bit encryption scheme leaves you with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. Done twice, that means it's 36,893,488,147,419,103,232 which is still far less than 128-bit encryption. I may be doing my calculations wrong (big numbers are scary...) but I think the difference between brute-force cracking a 128-bit key and two 64-bit keys is 340,282,366,920,938,463,426,481,119,284,349,108,22 4 - so a 128-bit key has that many more possible keys than even using two separate keys and encrypting twice with 64-bit encryption.
The thing that some people don't realize here, is (unless the encryption system has a known weak spot) you would have to brute-force 2^64 level-1-keys, and then (this is the scary part) you would have to try each of the 2^64 level-2-keys on each of the outputs from 2^64 level-1-key trials. So maybe it's not as far from a 128-bit key as one would think, but ONLY provided that the only way of attacking it was brute-force.
When working in production (clothing, advertising, really all design stuff) you have to be able to choose a color in the graphics program you're working in, have it look like that color on your monitor, and look exactly the same when you print it.
If your red-tones on the monitor are more green than they should be, a designer looking at the composition may overcompensate to make it look right on the monitor by changing the color levels, or choosing a different color which looks more appropriate. However, once it's printed, the printer will print it totally different than the uncalibrated monitor, and the colors will be all wrong again.
It's all got to be calibrated, or things will come out wrong at one step or another.
That's exactly how it was when I worked at Circuit City.
I worked in small electronics for a couple weeks, then they promoted me up to selling laptops and computers (also monitors, digital cameras, and other higher ticket items). Once I got into that area, I started looking at the monitors, and was astonished by how bad almost all of the monitors looked. In a couple instances, it looked almost as though they were purposely changing the lower cost monitors to look bad, and the higher priced monitors were left at default settings. They never told me they were doing it on purpose though, so I went around and fixed them all. I'm sure a lot of the issue was also customers playing with the settings on their own (and I wish we had more customers that did, tho I wished they'd set it back when they were done:) ). It was amazing how great the super-cheap Liquid Video LCDs looked, even compared to the higher-end Samsung and Sony models. I then proceeded to sell a bunch of them, while before I fixed them I wasn't selling the cheap Liquid Video monitors or the more expensive monitors.
I then started wandering over to the TV area, and after adjusting some plasmas, LCDs, and DLP TVs I sold a few of them too, even though it wasn't even my department.
The other people I worked with didn't even seem to be able to tell that something was wrong with the images. Then again, they had no idea what a KVM switch was either, even though they stocked them every week. Sad that CC (and presumably most electronics retailers) hire sales people, not tech people.
It works very well, and has a different flavor than most energy drinks. Sort of grapefruity, at the very least grapey (it does have grape seed extract in it...). SoBe No Fear is definitely my favorite.
Oh, and MDX pisses me off, because they keep advertising "Drinks like a soda, kicks like an energy drink" - but it's got nothing in it but caffeine. No vitamins, no guarana/ginseng, taurine, creatine - anything. There's nothing in it to make it any different from any normal soda.
Now, that would be very true, but when MS-DOS was tops, editing config.sys and autoexec.bat was considered basic operator knowledge. You couldn't install a new soundcard without doing it, and you'd also have to know what the jumpers were set to on the physical card. Today, with PnP, all this is handled for you, and there are very rarely physical jumpers to be seen. In the age of Win2k and greater (and even, but to a lesser extent, Win9x), I agree with you that the normal computer user's knowledge level has greatly diminished. And the actual knowledge of computers only decreases as MS abstracts the user from their hardware more and more. It is now to the point where many users don't know whether their graphics and sound are built in to the motherboard or separate cards. If many users were ever asked for drivers for their graphics card, they'd be totally confused and claim it was built in, so it shouldn't need them.
It scares me that they let some people operate computers. What scares me more is that they let these same people work on them for a living. If your day to day job requires you to use a computer all day, you would think that you would have to have a decent knowledge of them. This is very far from the truth. I almost think that IT departments try to get their companies to hire people with as little actual computer knowledge (beyond the very basics required to perform their daily tasks) as possible, as it makes the IT's job easier partly, and secures the IT dept's need in the company. If the end user doesn't know how to install a program, or know they could be spending the day downloading music in the background, all the better for IT. Never mind that they don't know how to copy files from one directory to another (or that when it's not called a 'folder' they stare at you blankly), at least they're not installing their own things and getting around your security. Anything they break can be easily fixed. Not so with tech saavy users who know what they're doing most of the time, but when they break something, they REALLY break it.
sad, but totally true...
I was a freshmen software engineering student at RIT a couple years ago, and it really seemed to me like most of the people there were there to learn it for money. No real interest in computers, no real passion for technology. My roommate, and several others I came across, had never written a line of code before going to the school. It scared me that a lot of them probably wouldn't be able to even attempt to get an A+ cert. and they're going for a BS in CS or SE.
They're saying Cogent is intentionally not advertising routes to them via other providers, presumably because they're upset about not having a peering agreement in place. Anyone affected by this presumably needs to harass Cogent.
I think you read that wrong, or maybe I am. What I'm seeing is
We [L3] disconnected someone [Cogent]. Cogent, you might be a little pissed, and decide not to allow our traffic to go over your lines (go figure...). If a peer [Cogent, again] doesn't find another peer to route their traffic through, then their customers won't be able to access our network. If you're a customer of that peer [Hi, Cogent!] you're screwed, so hook up with us, or one of our partners.
I'm reading it as L3 trying to dick Cogent around. Maybe that's just me.
I don't care either way so far, haven't been denied access to anything yet.
We should take this as a note that we should start the internet over, as a totally distributed network. Every country has a main link (of course, there are several of these for every decently sized country, or you'd kinda be defeating the distributed part...), and every state/province has their own peering to that link, and cities down from there etc. - all government owned, and agreed internationally (UN perhaps... tho they've been kinda missing with Bush in office...) that under no condition can they ever intentionally sever the link. I would even think that, government owned and funded, it would be almost a trifle for 10mbit internet connections to be had by all. Of course, the current providers would still be offering residential and business service, but the money would be going to the government, to help cover the costs of the network (along with federal subsidies), instead of Tier1 ISPs.
Really, the only good reasons to use gmail is the 2.5GB of space and [like any webmail] you can check it from anywhere. But there's one more excellent reason - pop3. With gmail, you don't have to stop using Eudora. You can use gmail's decent interface when you're not at your computer, and otherwise use the same email client that you love.
That's the only reason I made a gmail account. I wanted to keep using (don't throw things at me... please) Outlook Express. I used to have a NetZero account ONLY because of the free pop3 email access, screw getting online with it:). NZ doesn't support pop3 for free members anymore, so I had to find something else. I had heard about gmail a while before, but who really cares about searching through your mail? Besides, if I needed to, I could do that in OE. But when I was looking at the site, I realized they had free pop3. HOLY DAMN.
I hate web interfaces. I'm on dialup. I don't want pictures and an interface to have to download every time I check my mail - I just want the mail. Thus... gmail via pop3. It's worked marvelously for me so far.
It won't require a broadband connection, almost assuredly. That would be cutting out the large portion of the US which doesn't have access to any sort of broadband internet access (with the possible exception of satellite, pfft...)
It will most certainly be a connection to a phone line, dialing up to a toll-free number. This makes it a little more difficult to bypass their checks. There would have to be hardware and/or firmware modification. Probably modifying the firmware would be enough, unless there's some sort of unlock code that has to be looked up for each disc...
ANYWAYS... why do you need to h4x0r your set-top box? Just hack your blu-ray DVD burner and software (if required), get rid of the code lookup and burn a perfectly working disc that doesn't even know it's supposed to phone home.
Reminds me of macrovision... having trouble playing a macrovision protected disc on a projector, or want to use the video-out on your video card so you can watch it on TV? Decrypt it, reburn it, and you're back to full-screen video goodness.
What I think is sad is that I am more capable than all of the HS level technology teachers I've come in contact with (who all had teaching degrees), and that they wouldn't hire someone with only a CS degree to teach a CS class while they would hire someone with only a teaching degree.
I don't really have anything against them not hiring someone without a CS degree to teach CS classes, but I do have something against them requiring a teaching degree and not putting the emphasis on the CS degree. Who would I rather have teaching my child? Someone with proven knowledge in their subject or someone that's got a degree to teach but has only glazed over the subject they're trying to convey.
This isn't the case in most areas though. Most English teachers have an English degree, most Math teachers have degrees in Math. I just find it amazing that, at this point, with computers as obviously important in life as they are and constantly gaining ground over time - Computer Science is still treated as an elective course.
What's sad is that I know enough about computers to teach a HS computer science class (in fact, I know far far more than the comp sci teacher I had in HS did) but they wouldn't hire me if I begged them because I don't have a teaching degree. I don't have a CS degree either, but I doubt they would care much about that being missing.
What really confuses me is why CS classes generally go right into teaching programming, but don't teach the architecture of computers, or at most barely touch on the subject. No one who doesn't know a decent amount about computers should be writing programs for them.
If I were to start teaching a class, the first semester would be all about computer architecture. They should be able to take one apart and put it together, install and configure an OS (or more than one OS) and learn the underlying principles of computers. There's so much there which could make them all so familiar with how computers really work that it wouldn't matter which OS they used in the end, because they all have the same issues they're dealing with, just different methods.
I'd probably have them all come in the class on the first day to computers sitting at an MS-DOS (PC-DOS... something of that sort) prompt. Walk them through things for a little bit, until they understand that "folders" don't always have icons next to them, and C: doesn't necessarily point at your harddrive.
Some may be bored (Think you know it all, eh? To Linux with you! Already played with that? Try VMS on for size!), but there will be a lot of kids to whom this will all be totally new.
But, if you disagree with this plan, don't worry, because the school district will never hire someone who knows what they're doing, or has ideas.
XP 3200s are ~2000Mhz?::checks:: Yeah, that's right... so I guess that I'm really running between that and a 3400 (@ 2100Mhz). Same diff, but to answer you - no, I couldn't because it's really an Athlon XP 2500 Barton. Amazing how easy it is to go to a 200Mhz FSB:)
he meant the fact that something being 300% slower doesn't exactly work...
If a card (x800, let's say) is working at max ability, then it's working at 100%. If it weren't working at all, the slowest it could be is 0%.
Now, the 9200, working at 100% efficiency may be 3x slower than the x800, but that would be 66% slower than the x800. Saying the 9200 is 300% to 600% slower implies that it's working at -300% to -600% (or is that -200% to -500%... I'm starting to get lost myself...). With 0% being no work being done at all, -300% would have to mean that negative work is being done. Not only is the game not being rendered, but perhaps the game you played before somehow being unrendered in an amazing feat of reverse temporal engineering...
Anyways, while we may know what you're talking about, saying something is 3x slower isn't the same as 300% slower.
The chinese are building massive OS operations, and though use MS, mostly because stealing MS is cheaper than legal OSS, this may change.
How exactly is stealing MS's product cheaper than OSS? OSS is open source by definition... if there's a program you want, you can compile it yourself. Even if there are versions of it (that come precompiled and perhaps with extras) for a fee, you can still get the program/operating system for free.
Granted, stealing a MS product is free, but unless you also steal every bit of software that you run on it (not at all impossible, but it entails doing a lot more than just using a pirated copy of XP) then as soon as you pay for a single game, office application, tax program, or anything - you've already paid more than you would have by strictly using OSS.
And in all reality, any desktop PC that's of worthwhile quality to be doing video editing should have firewire, SATA or SCSI interfaces, and over a GB of RAM. Even then, I can barely stand it.
While computing power has gone up and up, completely demolishing almost all waiting for things to process (ripping a CD to MP3 in 15-20 minutes, for example. Considering how much is actually being done, the wait is negligable), video editing and encoding seem to be the only things that are still terribly tedious to do. I've got an Athlon 3200 with 1.5GB of RAM and I still have to set an encoding task of movie length to be worked on at night and go to bed, only to hope it will be done by noon or so the next day. Often it's still working even by then.
What I really need is a decent sized cluster of PCs and a way of splitting up the work among them. I found a program called Vidomi for distributed encoding, and that looks promising, but since I don't have an array of computers at my disposal (yet) I haven't been able to test it at all. It still wouldn't help the actual editing though, unless perhaps I had a single PC with 4 dual-core processors or something... oh how I wish I had money. But as I'm presently broke (and in debt a few grand... thank you student loans...) it'll probably be years before I get to play with these ideas. Oh the thought of having a roomfull of computers with 4 dual-core processors and 4GB RAM a piece, and maybe 16 or so 15k RPM SCSI drives in a RAID array...::cleans up self::
Anyways... uh... firewire and a laptop, with an external hdd... that's the ticket...
years ago, I read that the traffic lights were changed (by the emergency vehicles) by having strobe lights that flashed certain patterns and at certain rates
I have no idea if that's still how it's done, but it's ungodly simple to do if that's the case. However, the patterns and rates were different for different cities, so one generic device probably wouldn't do it. Now, a programmable strobe and a little time to brute-force the traffic lights, and you'd only have to figure out the pattern for each region once...
"It's about the ACTIVATION KEY which is an additional step used when installing. The activation key is calulated with a hash based on your hard disk's serial number, and some of your hardware."
Of course, corporate/enterprise versions often don't need to be activated...
Slashdot Mirror
First, don't allow them to touch a computer at all.
Give them a problem, a real problem - not "print 'Hello World' on the screen" but something they actually have to think about, that has steps. Nothing abstract, something to the point - fuck, give them a math problem if you have to (ooh... this could be evil, but you could throw a semi-simple algebra problem at them! "How would you figure out what number x would be in the problem 17 + 2x = 42?") - and make them figure it out. Make them work out all the steps that would have to be done to solve the problem (sure, it's not too many, but make them break it down). Give them hints, of course, but let them all try to figure out how it works.
NEXT pick a language - I think BASIC is probably a good place to start, for simplicitie's sake. If you think they're really bright and want to give them a nice challenge, throw Perl, Python or Java at them. Give them a good overview of the language's functions and operators, show them a few sample programs, and let them tweak them around to get a feel for things. Then tell them to write a program that will allow them to solve your math problem, but that they have to do it all in variables.
Something along the lines of:
a = 17
b = 2
c = 42
c - a = d
d / b = e
print e
would be expected. Now have them turn the variables into numbers they can input. Now that they have an idea about breaking things down, give them other problems (math or otherwise). As much like a 'good idea' (because they'd be so interested, of course) you'd think that having them design and implement a game is - I don't think it's a good idea. For just starting out, that's a lot of work, and totally unexpected problems can and will arise. Some simple games may be okay (think Hangman, but counting down chances instead of showing a figure - unless your students are exceptionally bright).
If you've got a good deal of time with them - change it up. Make them start a new language. The meat is all the same, the way you go about it is just a little different. Every language has its own positive aspects, things it should be used for, and things it's probably a better idea not to. Procedural languages would be harder to do something like Hangman in (at least, after you've got a good grip on OO-programming techniques), but for just adding a few numbers and spitting out a result, procedural programming will save you a lot of time.
After a little bit of work, start introducing things like arrays and hashes (if your language of choice supports them), queues and stacks and such. Above all, show them reasons to use them, don't just say "this is a stack" and expect them to start coming up with useful things to do with it. It's a little abstract, and an example or 10 will go a long way.
Have fun!
Going purely by the numbers, I believe that the possible combinations for a 128-bit security system would be 3.4028236692093846346337460743177 * 10^38
2 4 - so a 128-bit key has that many more possible keys than even using two separate keys and encrypting twice with 64-bit encryption.
On the contrast, a 64-bit encryption scheme leaves you with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. Done twice, that means it's 36,893,488,147,419,103,232 which is still far less than 128-bit encryption. I may be doing my calculations wrong (big numbers are scary...) but I think the difference between brute-force cracking a 128-bit key and two 64-bit keys is 340,282,366,920,938,463,426,481,119,284,349,108,2
The thing that some people don't realize here, is (unless the encryption system has a known weak spot) you would have to brute-force 2^64 level-1-keys, and then (this is the scary part) you would have to try each of the 2^64 level-2-keys on each of the outputs from 2^64 level-1-key trials. So maybe it's not as far from a 128-bit key as one would think, but ONLY provided that the only way of attacking it was brute-force.
Very simple - color matching.
When working in production (clothing, advertising, really all design stuff) you have to be able to choose a color in the graphics program you're working in, have it look like that color on your monitor, and look exactly the same when you print it.
If your red-tones on the monitor are more green than they should be, a designer looking at the composition may overcompensate to make it look right on the monitor by changing the color levels, or choosing a different color which looks more appropriate. However, once it's printed, the printer will print it totally different than the uncalibrated monitor, and the colors will be all wrong again.
It's all got to be calibrated, or things will come out wrong at one step or another.
That's exactly how it was when I worked at Circuit City.
:) ). It was amazing how great the super-cheap Liquid Video LCDs looked, even compared to the higher-end Samsung and Sony models. I then proceeded to sell a bunch of them, while before I fixed them I wasn't selling the cheap Liquid Video monitors or the more expensive monitors.
I worked in small electronics for a couple weeks, then they promoted me up to selling laptops and computers (also monitors, digital cameras, and other higher ticket items). Once I got into that area, I started looking at the monitors, and was astonished by how bad almost all of the monitors looked. In a couple instances, it looked almost as though they were purposely changing the lower cost monitors to look bad, and the higher priced monitors were left at default settings. They never told me they were doing it on purpose though, so I went around and fixed them all. I'm sure a lot of the issue was also customers playing with the settings on their own (and I wish we had more customers that did, tho I wished they'd set it back when they were done
I then started wandering over to the TV area, and after adjusting some plasmas, LCDs, and DLP TVs I sold a few of them too, even though it wasn't even my department.
The other people I worked with didn't even seem to be able to tell that something was wrong with the images. Then again, they had no idea what a KVM switch was either, even though they stocked them every week. Sad that CC (and presumably most electronics retailers) hire sales people, not tech people.
Actually, he's Australian, I believe, so he spelled it correctly, according to British English. Nice try though.
absolutely the best
It works very well, and has a different flavor than most energy drinks. Sort of grapefruity, at the very least grapey (it does have grape seed extract in it...). SoBe No Fear is definitely my favorite.
Oh, and MDX pisses me off, because they keep advertising "Drinks like a soda, kicks like an energy drink" - but it's got nothing in it but caffeine. No vitamins, no guarana/ginseng, taurine, creatine - anything. There's nothing in it to make it any different from any normal soda.
"MDX - Drinks like a soda, because it is one."
I bet it's Microsoft :)
Now, that would be very true, but when MS-DOS was tops, editing config.sys and autoexec.bat was considered basic operator knowledge. You couldn't install a new soundcard without doing it, and you'd also have to know what the jumpers were set to on the physical card. Today, with PnP, all this is handled for you, and there are very rarely physical jumpers to be seen. In the age of Win2k and greater (and even, but to a lesser extent, Win9x), I agree with you that the normal computer user's knowledge level has greatly diminished. And the actual knowledge of computers only decreases as MS abstracts the user from their hardware more and more. It is now to the point where many users don't know whether their graphics and sound are built in to the motherboard or separate cards. If many users were ever asked for drivers for their graphics card, they'd be totally confused and claim it was built in, so it shouldn't need them.
It scares me that they let some people operate computers. What scares me more is that they let these same people work on them for a living. If your day to day job requires you to use a computer all day, you would think that you would have to have a decent knowledge of them. This is very far from the truth. I almost think that IT departments try to get their companies to hire people with as little actual computer knowledge (beyond the very basics required to perform their daily tasks) as possible, as it makes the IT's job easier partly, and secures the IT dept's need in the company. If the end user doesn't know how to install a program, or know they could be spending the day downloading music in the background, all the better for IT. Never mind that they don't know how to copy files from one directory to another (or that when it's not called a 'folder' they stare at you blankly), at least they're not installing their own things and getting around your security. Anything they break can be easily fixed. Not so with tech saavy users who know what they're doing most of the time, but when they break something, they REALLY break it.
sad, but totally true...
I was a freshmen software engineering student at RIT a couple years ago, and it really seemed to me like most of the people there were there to learn it for money. No real interest in computers, no real passion for technology. My roommate, and several others I came across, had never written a line of code before going to the school. It scared me that a lot of them probably wouldn't be able to even attempt to get an A+ cert. and they're going for a BS in CS or SE.
They're saying Cogent is intentionally not advertising routes to them via other providers, presumably because they're upset about not having a peering agreement in place. Anyone affected by this presumably needs to harass Cogent. I think you read that wrong, or maybe I am. What I'm seeing is We [L3] disconnected someone [Cogent]. Cogent, you might be a little pissed, and decide not to allow our traffic to go over your lines (go figure...). If a peer [Cogent, again] doesn't find another peer to route their traffic through, then their customers won't be able to access our network. If you're a customer of that peer [Hi, Cogent!] you're screwed, so hook up with us, or one of our partners. I'm reading it as L3 trying to dick Cogent around. Maybe that's just me. I don't care either way so far, haven't been denied access to anything yet. We should take this as a note that we should start the internet over, as a totally distributed network. Every country has a main link (of course, there are several of these for every decently sized country, or you'd kinda be defeating the distributed part...), and every state/province has their own peering to that link, and cities down from there etc. - all government owned, and agreed internationally (UN perhaps... tho they've been kinda missing with Bush in office...) that under no condition can they ever intentionally sever the link. I would even think that, government owned and funded, it would be almost a trifle for 10mbit internet connections to be had by all. Of course, the current providers would still be offering residential and business service, but the money would be going to the government, to help cover the costs of the network (along with federal subsidies), instead of Tier1 ISPs.
LMAO...
this was far funnier than you got credit for. Simple, but funny.
Really, the only good reasons to use gmail is the 2.5GB of space and [like any webmail] you can check it from anywhere. But there's one more excellent reason - pop3. With gmail, you don't have to stop using Eudora. You can use gmail's decent interface when you're not at your computer, and otherwise use the same email client that you love.
:). NZ doesn't support pop3 for free members anymore, so I had to find something else. I had heard about gmail a while before, but who really cares about searching through your mail? Besides, if I needed to, I could do that in OE. But when I was looking at the site, I realized they had free pop3. HOLY DAMN.
That's the only reason I made a gmail account. I wanted to keep using (don't throw things at me... please) Outlook Express. I used to have a NetZero account ONLY because of the free pop3 email access, screw getting online with it
I hate web interfaces. I'm on dialup. I don't want pictures and an interface to have to download every time I check my mail - I just want the mail. Thus... gmail via pop3. It's worked marvelously for me so far.
It won't require a broadband connection, almost assuredly. That would be cutting out the large portion of the US which doesn't have access to any sort of broadband internet access (with the possible exception of satellite, pfft...)
It will most certainly be a connection to a phone line, dialing up to a toll-free number. This makes it a little more difficult to bypass their checks. There would have to be hardware and/or firmware modification. Probably modifying the firmware would be enough, unless there's some sort of unlock code that has to be looked up for each disc...
ANYWAYS... why do you need to h4x0r your set-top box? Just hack your blu-ray DVD burner and software (if required), get rid of the code lookup and burn a perfectly working disc that doesn't even know it's supposed to phone home.
Reminds me of macrovision... having trouble playing a macrovision protected disc on a projector, or want to use the video-out on your video card so you can watch it on TV? Decrypt it, reburn it, and you're back to full-screen video goodness.
What I think is sad is that I am more capable than all of the HS level technology teachers I've come in contact with (who all had teaching degrees), and that they wouldn't hire someone with only a CS degree to teach a CS class while they would hire someone with only a teaching degree.
I don't really have anything against them not hiring someone without a CS degree to teach CS classes, but I do have something against them requiring a teaching degree and not putting the emphasis on the CS degree. Who would I rather have teaching my child? Someone with proven knowledge in their subject or someone that's got a degree to teach but has only glazed over the subject they're trying to convey.
This isn't the case in most areas though. Most English teachers have an English degree, most Math teachers have degrees in Math. I just find it amazing that, at this point, with computers as obviously important in life as they are and constantly gaining ground over time - Computer Science is still treated as an elective course.
What's sad is that I know enough about computers to teach a HS computer science class (in fact, I know far far more than the comp sci teacher I had in HS did) but they wouldn't hire me if I begged them because I don't have a teaching degree. I don't have a CS degree either, but I doubt they would care much about that being missing.
What really confuses me is why CS classes generally go right into teaching programming, but don't teach the architecture of computers, or at most barely touch on the subject. No one who doesn't know a decent amount about computers should be writing programs for them.
If I were to start teaching a class, the first semester would be all about computer architecture. They should be able to take one apart and put it together, install and configure an OS (or more than one OS) and learn the underlying principles of computers. There's so much there which could make them all so familiar with how computers really work that it wouldn't matter which OS they used in the end, because they all have the same issues they're dealing with, just different methods.
I'd probably have them all come in the class on the first day to computers sitting at an MS-DOS (PC-DOS... something of that sort) prompt. Walk them through things for a little bit, until they understand that "folders" don't always have icons next to them, and C: doesn't necessarily point at your harddrive.
Some may be bored (Think you know it all, eh? To Linux with you! Already played with that? Try VMS on for size!), but there will be a lot of kids to whom this will all be totally new.
But, if you disagree with this plan, don't worry, because the school district will never hire someone who knows what they're doing, or has ideas.
exactly, I mean - how am I supposed to run Windows Update on a Linux box which doesn't support ActiveX? ;)
XP 3200s are ~2000Mhz? ::checks:: Yeah, that's right... so I guess that I'm really running between that and a 3400 (@ 2100Mhz). Same diff, but to answer you - no, I couldn't because it's really an Athlon XP 2500 Barton. Amazing how easy it is to go to a 200Mhz FSB :)
he meant the fact that something being 300% slower doesn't exactly work... If a card (x800, let's say) is working at max ability, then it's working at 100%. If it weren't working at all, the slowest it could be is 0%. Now, the 9200, working at 100% efficiency may be 3x slower than the x800, but that would be 66% slower than the x800. Saying the 9200 is 300% to 600% slower implies that it's working at -300% to -600% (or is that -200% to -500%... I'm starting to get lost myself...). With 0% being no work being done at all, -300% would have to mean that negative work is being done. Not only is the game not being rendered, but perhaps the game you played before somehow being unrendered in an amazing feat of reverse temporal engineering... Anyways, while we may know what you're talking about, saying something is 3x slower isn't the same as 300% slower.
And in all reality, any desktop PC that's of worthwhile quality to be doing video editing should have firewire, SATA or SCSI interfaces, and over a GB of RAM. Even then, I can barely stand it. While computing power has gone up and up, completely demolishing almost all waiting for things to process (ripping a CD to MP3 in 15-20 minutes, for example. Considering how much is actually being done, the wait is negligable), video editing and encoding seem to be the only things that are still terribly tedious to do. I've got an Athlon 3200 with 1.5GB of RAM and I still have to set an encoding task of movie length to be worked on at night and go to bed, only to hope it will be done by noon or so the next day. Often it's still working even by then. What I really need is a decent sized cluster of PCs and a way of splitting up the work among them. I found a program called Vidomi for distributed encoding, and that looks promising, but since I don't have an array of computers at my disposal (yet) I haven't been able to test it at all. It still wouldn't help the actual editing though, unless perhaps I had a single PC with 4 dual-core processors or something... oh how I wish I had money. But as I'm presently broke (and in debt a few grand... thank you student loans...) it'll probably be years before I get to play with these ideas. Oh the thought of having a roomfull of computers with 4 dual-core processors and 4GB RAM a piece, and maybe 16 or so 15k RPM SCSI drives in a RAID array... ::cleans up self::
Anyways... uh... firewire and a laptop, with an external hdd... that's the ticket...
years ago, I read that the traffic lights were changed (by the emergency vehicles) by having strobe lights that flashed certain patterns and at certain rates I have no idea if that's still how it's done, but it's ungodly simple to do if that's the case. However, the patterns and rates were different for different cities, so one generic device probably wouldn't do it. Now, a programmable strobe and a little time to brute-force the traffic lights, and you'd only have to figure out the pattern for each region once...
"It's about the ACTIVATION KEY which is an additional step used when installing. The activation key is calulated with a hash based on your hard disk's serial number, and some of your hardware."
Of course, corporate/enterprise versions often don't need to be activated...