03 Jun 2004
I’ve made a vague promise that this would be written in loose terms, so I’m sorry if I break definitions of loose, here ;p
The St. Andrews IT department has long been a cause of angst not only for students, but for teachers, parents, and fish. In the past, there have been various people attempt to hacksaw it down, however they have been detained and generally oppressed because of it.
This is a topic scarce-discussed, for fear of reprisals from various personnel. As Ellis Baker would say in “The System” – “Anything but I.T. Levi, anything.” But SC shall brave it, bringing you news from the front at great risk to life, limb, and network access privileges. Well, okay, reduced risk to the former two, and dubious risk to the third.
Don’t interrupt my dramatisation, okay?
So, anyway… In the past, such attempts to fell the gargantuan enterprise that is SACS IT have been circumvented (often before the offending parties were aware that such attempts had occurred – such is the benefit of a “first strike” network admin policy, it would seem. Nevermind prevention, accusation is the cure!) – but now, two brave young men have endevoured to strike where none have ever (publicly) struck before (and gotten caught for it).
Bob and Bill, as they shall be known, set out on a mission to bypass the *cough* security measures *endcough* that St. Andrews had in place, using a vast variety of highly skilled programmes (note: skill rests in programmes) obtained from highly secretive and little known security resources on something known as the Internet. Big “I”, there.
It is alleged that certain people obtained access to resources through the use of utilities designed especially to disrupt network activity within St. Andrews, namely known as Linux, a highly malicious tool for Black Hat hackers, with known violations of global intellectual property law. Clearly, this is a tool only for extreme criminals on the edge of society.
Specifically, they are thought to have made use of the dubiously named “CISCO TESTING SERVER”, labelled with an equally questionable message – “DO NOT TURN OFF”. This computer, thought to have been running a variant of this highly illegal “Linux”, was a purpose-built hacking tool, with the capacity to destroy nations at the press of a button. Go the direct link to ye olde ICBM launcher on the roof of BBC.
Hey, this is sounding more and more like “The System” every minute! Bring on Paint!
[i]If you haven’t read it, talk to Ellis Baker sometime, or talk to me and I’ll email you a copy of it – from what I’ve heard from him, he’d want as many people to read it as possible… hehe, it is a VERY good read.[/i]
Disclaimer: [i]The information presented above is not guaranteed to contain a shred of truth. For the most part, I have taken a small part reality, and distorted it beyond immediate recognition. If anyone is offended by the truth that remains, if you can give me legal reason to retract comments, then I will. Until then, post a comment, have a cry, and get on with your life.
Oh, and secure your networks, whilst you’re at it.[/i]
02 Jun 2004
Yeah. They’re pretty cool. I’ve got myself six meters of seriously fat Figure 8 audio cable for absolutely nothing. That rates as cool in my book.
So, whilst they’re giving me free stuff, I’ll give them a little bit of a plug. They’ve got this new clock released this year, okay? Now, normally I absolutely hate all that gimmicky crap they’re moving towards, but this is very cool. Product number is XC0170, and it’s not listed on their website yet (as of this evening at 6:02PM)… you know how you get those things which have metal rods in them, and you press your hand on one side, and get an imprint on the other? Like a RealWorld™ emboss filter? Yeah, that’s how this clock displays the time!
Very cool. It’s $99, which is kind of expensive for something that tells the time, but has immense leet factor.
So why were Jaycar giving me free stuff? I mean, I’m cool and all, but still… Yeah, okay, I’m not cool. But I did send in my “Send me a free catalog next year” form in LAST years catalog. And apparently, AusPost wanted to charge them $10/copy to mail out (it’s a kinda chunky catalog – good thing Farnell don’t use AusPost… actually, I think they’ve abandoned the free mailout idea. For those who don’t know, their catalog is literally about the size of a pair of Yellow Pages books, and they used to (possibly still do) mail it out for free.) – so Jaycar went “well screw them, let’s milk it for all it’s worth in terms of customer goodwill!”
Hey, I have no problems with that. I had to choose between getting $10 worth of free stuff and collecting a catalog in person, or BUYING A STAMP, sending a RealMail™ (i.e. not email!) to Jaycar, and then having to WAIT for AusPost to get this catalog to me. Mmmm… hard decision.
So yeah, I randomly wandered down to Jaycar this arvo (Ben tagged along), picked up a free catalog, and jumped on an offcut of cable (six meters!), because it was so incredibly cheap (list price was six bucks, but zero is better!), and also another blue LED, just to offset the spare change (which they can’t give – the LED was $3.95, so I only “lost” 5 cents).
The LED will be going in a CD drive eventually, I think. Yet to decide which one. Whenever it happens, I’ll post something.
In other LED-related news, Jaycar have Luxeon Stars in their catalog!!! Woooo!!! Can’t wait to get some and randomly put them all over the place! Go hugely insane power suckage!!
Ooooh… and they also have TRI COLOUR LED’s… none of this auto-switching crap, these have actually got like four pins on them (or three, or something… I can’t remember)! If I had skill, then I’d start trying to build some massive LED display device… but I don’t, and no-one is paying me to try ;).
So yeah. Excited about lots of geeky stuff. Very cool. Go buy stuff from Jaycar ;)
02 Jun 2004
English Journal Entry #1
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Today was the first time all of our group confirmed that, in fact, we WERE a group (I was absent when the assessment was handed out), and we discussed a few things.
Having determined who was in the group, we set out to agree on a plot of sorts. The first suggestion was that we satirise, and generally poke a stick in the direction of, the politics (and associated envy) associated with positions of student leadership at SACS. Upon reflection, this potentially would have been offensive… and a better idea was reached. The original wasn’t anywhere near twisted enough for our groups liking, so we embarked on something a little more warped.
Essentially, the plot is three characters in a play are jealous over the parts of each other. The play being our group presentation, the jealousy being related to our parts within the play and the individual marking of these roles. We’re playing ourselves in a play about ourselves — recursively, the play is set in the development of the play itself. So, scripting will be based on real dialog occurring in our preparation.
We’ll be making use of soliloquies, having (forcibly brief, given the four-minute time constraint) moments of reflection in which various characters reveal their thoughts (whilst the other two are “frozen” in time).
01 Jun 2004
Just not always on time. But, as vaguely indicated would occur, a new feature has emerged on this website.
It gives me the opportunity to ask stupid questions, and get stupider answers. As opposed to asking stupider questions, and not getting ANY answers.
I’m still wondering which is better, but hey. Anyway. Cool new feature, and all that. Try it out. I hope it works. Or, at least, pretends to work. That form really just emails your comment to a monkey, who has to manually edit the webpage – no databases around here, kiddies.
Just for the record, I’m joking. That’s MY monkey, animal rights activists!!
01 Jun 2004
Hmm… I’ve decided to make use of the commenting system, both because I can, and because it’s genuinely something useful in this instance. Yep, that’s right — “KLICKING DA BUTTN!” has useful applications! Just, err, remember to type a message first, okay? Good. If you don’t, then not much happens…
So, this “call for names” isn’t about conscription or anything. I don’t want YOUR names… well… I do want your name, if you’ve got a cool name or something. No, I’m just hopeless at deciding on names of any kind, and I’m meant to be writing this short story thingamajig for English. I’m needing at least two names — one which sounds überly evil, and another which is that of a victim — who becomes evil by the actions of the überly evil one. Get all that?
So, two names — a really evil one, and a moderately normal (but preferably obscure, because obscure names are cool) name… yeah. See, I wasn’t wasting my time developing a commenting system! It has genuine applications in the field of… err… name harvesting?
Why do I sound like a spammer…