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Slashback: Folding, Cursing, Exporting 161

Posted by timothy from the tomorrow-is-confiscation-day dept.
Slashback tonight brings updates and clarifications on the odds of Apple Computer buying Universal Music, the Evil Bit RFC, and more, including Niels Provos' reasons for moving his cryptographic research tools off-shore.

The more numerous the laws ... friscolr writes "The Register has an article about security researcher Niels Provos's (creator/collaborator for systrace, honeyd, openssh, various steg tools, and more) struggle to continue his Ph.D. studies amidst an increasingly restrictive set of U.S. and Michigan laws. This isn't the first time a prominent security researcher in Michigan has voiced serious concerns over new laws."

You may remember several earlier stories mentioning Provos' research, such as this article on his honeynet creation tool honeyd.

Apple Records has a certain ring, though, doesn't it? egoff writes "The Apple/Universal Music deal is unlikely, according to the New York Times (reg req), nor would it be a sure hit with investors. However, if the deal did go through, it would be because of Steve Job's vision for the future of digital music. Said one former Apple exec: 'Apple always needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat. Universal is a pretty big rabbit.'"

Swearing in another language doesn't count. Chilliwilli writes with an update to the recent Anger As a Software Design Philosophy: "Anyone that took a look at the foul language feckfeck might be amazed to see that somebody has actually risen to one of the three challenges and written a quine in this more irritating of languages. Congratulations go to 'hoser'."

Upping their meds. Elyjah writes "Steve Bellovin has compiled a short list of emails he got regarding his most recent RFC (3514) which appeared this last April 1st. (I believe you may have seen something on Slashdot about it.) Some people just...don't...get it."

If you go beyond the Enterprise, doesn't that invalidate their theme song? Built enough floppy-disk Enterprises? GaryK writes "With Dell getting rid of 3.5" disk drives, I'm quite sure we'll have to come up with creative uses for the hundreds and hundreds of floppies we have around our offices. This guy should serve as an inspiration to us all.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashback: Folding, Cursing, Exporting More

Slashback: Folding, Cursing, Exporting

Comments Filter:

  • Floppy disks... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sleeperservice ( 62645 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:02PM (#5732409)
    ...also knows as "Old School Coasters", for those of us who remember a time before AOL CD-ROMs.

    • Re:Floppy disks... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pro-mpd ( 412123 )
      Ah, yes, AOL floppy disks. I turned in many a-C++ assignment on these. I also recall using Compuserve and Prodigy disks, but those just aren't as pervasive.
    • Which floppies you talking about? The small ones aren't really floppy so why do we call them floppies? Anyways the big ones are the real old school coasters and you really need them now as coasters for those 5 liter big gulp drink holders you get at the gas station.

    • AOL Floppy disks... (Score:2, Informative)

      by saskboy ( 600063 )
      Don't use those disks man:
      http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIte m&item =3603092159&category=4291

      Sell them on eBay to suckers looking for junk mail that takes their memories way back to the 1990s when AOL was hip.
    • I first started getting mostly CDs from AOL when I was a soph in college.
      The dorm suite I lived in had a single hallway connecting 5 rooms off of one side of it.

      My suitemates and I, upon findings of those CDs in our maail would then leave them on our desks by our computers.
      Then when we were bored, we would throw the CD out our dorm room doors and see if we could curve them properly to go out our rooms and into another.
      My best shot hit a suitemate in the head 3 rooms down - and I was drunk.

      We did similar t

    • Floppy RAID is cool. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:34PM (#5732577)

      Excuse me for "hanging" this on your funny-post, but the FDD-RAID project [8k.com] is just soo funny and I'd like more people to see it.

      It is really cool when you access the drives the way they flash each light and spin in no particular order that I can discern. It is of course faster than a standard single drive. I was able to transfer "DEVO Uncontrolable Urge.mp3" which is 3.6 MB in 32 seconds. Which is pretty good I think.

      (Really, with people posting "what's vorbis?" with every Vorbis story, I'm sure there must be persons out there for which this is new)

    • Well, I never really called them coasters, cause I would just peel the label off the best I could and format them. At least the old AOL 2.0 disks were useful.

      • I would just peel the label off the best I could and format them.

        I remember scavenging ten 1.44Mb HD floppies from an IBM booth (loaded with demo software) at a computer show over the course of a weekend back when the HD floppies were new technology and selling for $65 or more per box of ten; the computer I'd just bought had one of the new drives, but I wasn't making enough to actually buy them myself. Some care peeling the labels, and I had myself a stack of floppies whose aggregate capacity was a sign

        • stack of floppies whose aggregate capacity was a significant fraction of my hard drive's space.

          Yeah, I know what you mean. Floppies was precious! I remember my parents paying $350 for a 20MB hard drive when I was about 12. I don't know how anyone was able to put up with limitations like that -- of course, that was when your "Internet" software (Prodigy) was about 300k, and before web browsers were like 35 MB

    • Robot parts! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @08:33PM (#5732832) Journal
      Granted, the motors in floppy drives are pretty weak... but each drive contains two stepper motors, one uni-directional servo motor, at least 3 input switches (either optical or mechanical), and all the electronics to drive them!

      The whole thing can be controlled with simple pulses to the various pins on the cable connector, which means an old floppy drive is a cheap (free) way to add motor controls to any microcontroller project, or even drive it with the PC's printer port. Ideal for science fair projects and other low-low budget / non critical / fun stuff.

      Here [ohmslaw.com] and here [trueforce.com] are just some of many examples.

      Fun fun!
      =Smidge=
  • the legendary ease and innovaton of apple, legal music? sounds like a match made in heaven to me.

    • Re:apple records (Score:3, Informative)

      by pro-mpd ( 412123 )
      macos : xerox parc :: apple records : [napster|kazaa|gnutella] ?

      In Apple's favor, although they might not be first on the scene with digital music (duh), they will probably put out a product that will revolutionize the industry.

      Remember, it wasn't just the GUI, but it was rather the personal computer with a GUI that started it all.
    • You can try ... but those two don't mix...
      Or I guess you could say they do ... right after you rip, and right before you burn...
    • Actually... Apple Records is the record company that the Beatles started. Remember that whole green-apple-looking thing associated with the Beatles? Yeah, that's their record company. I think they were the only very famous band it ever released. I think they signed at least one other British Invasion band, but I can't remember who.

      I wonder if anyone else realized this.
      • I think everybody did. Jobs named it after the record company, and the record company sued him for trademark infringement.

        Actually, I think Apple promised not to sell records somewhere back then, so I guess if they're actually looking at that deal they figured out a loophole. Maybe it's ok if they keep everything under Universal's name or something.
        • I think everybody did. Jobs named it after the record company

          I thought he got the idea while he was eating an apple...he thought that it was the perfect food, or something along those lines, and that it'd be a decent name for a company.

      • I did... damn father and his beatles records...

  • One easy answer (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dicky ( 1327 ) <slash3@vmlinuz.org> on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:07PM (#5732428) Homepage
    Good Afternoon,

    What or who determines the "evilness" or "goodness" of the packet? If a security admin or OS can determine or flag bits as good, what keeps the hacker from spoofing this process by setting the bit to "good"? Does the bit change based on behavior? Or maybe a database with signatures of "bad" bits?

    (name deleted)
    Microsoft Corporation

    Not to worry, good sir - there is a simple and easy answer to your question. All Microsoft software and systems should automatically set the bit to evil! On the off-chance of the packet passing through a clean system, the bit could be set to good, but all data originating from a Microsoft system are, by definition, evil.

    HTH, HAND...

    • Re:One easy answer (Score:5, Funny)

      by inertia187 ( 156602 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:22PM (#5732520) Homepage Journal
      Yes, that is truely scary. Especially the part where he or she says, "Or maybe a database with signatures of "bad" bits?" Man, that's gotta be a tiny database:

      create table good_bad_bits (
      bit boolean not null primary key,
      evil boolean not null
      ) ;

      insert into good_bad_bits ( bit, evil ) values ( true, true ) ;
      insert into good_bad_bits ( bit, evil ) values ( false, true ) ; /* Ok, I guess I'm done. */

    • Re:One easy answer (Score:5, Funny)

      by Krondor ( 306666 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:44PM (#5732625) Homepage
      ... all data originating from a Microsoft system are, by definition, evil.

      Nevermind that "Evil" is a relative term, but I was under the impression that in fact all FreeBSD packets should in fact be "Evil". I mean they have a daemon (albeit a cute one for a mascot). I think they are more then deserving for that fact alone, but hasn't the FreeBSD crowd been the one primarily pushing for this bit to begin with?

      • Re:One easy answer (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I was under the impression that in fact all FreeBSD packets should in fact be "Evil".

        Yes, this is true. For proof, simply ask anyone who's ever configured BSD packet filtering.
    • (name deleted)
      Microsoft Corporation

      That you Bill?
      • That you Bill?

        No. It's whoever is currently responsible for making Windows more secure.... Makes me worry a bit about all those patches I've installed in the last couple weeks.

    • I believe that there is a secret memo floating around Microsoft to extend this standard by one bit:

      0x00 - If set to 0, the packet has no evil intent, as it was sent by a Microsoft product. There is no need for any security measures as all Microsoft products are inherently secure.

      0x01 - If set to 1, the packet may have no evil intent other than taking away market share from Microsoft and should be regarded with suspicion. These packets should be randomly dropped by all Microsoft products and blame put on the third party vendor.

      0x10 - If set to 2, the packet MAY have evil intent, but since it comes from a Microsoft product, there is no need for any security measures as all Microsoft products are inherently secure. Any Microsoft product that receives this packet should be setup to automatically notify Microsoft marketing and it's legal staff to start blaming Open Source software in the media.

      0x11 - If set to 3, the packet has evil intent since it comes from a third party, most likely an Open Source developer. All packets should be dropped immediately, any Microsoft product that receives this packet should be setup to automatically notify Microsoft marketing and it's legal staff to start blaming Open Source software in the media.

  • Universal is a pretty big rabbit (Score:5, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:07PM (#5732430)
    ...and Steve wears a pretty big hat. [geekculture.com]

  • CD Sculptures? (Score:2, Funny)

    by mungeh ( 663492 )
    Surely these would be more interesting (and much more shiny) than boring old floppy clips. I guess I'll just wait till 40gb DVD's render CD's useless and lots of boring nerds start wandering what the hell to do with their now useless 500 cd pr0n collection. Surely you could make life size models with CDs. they seem a lot more sculptable!

  • Apple Records? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    um, there's already a company called Apple Records. They put out music by an obscure group called the Beatles.

    I know, most /. ers are too young to remember those days...

    or the days when record labels had actual labels smack dab in the middle of those black disks.

  • The Beatles aren't gonna be happy about this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by CPgrower ( 644022 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:10PM (#5732449)
    Apple Records? I don't think the Beatles will go for it.

    rob

  • Microsoft Records? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis&utk,edu> on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:10PM (#5732450) Homepage Journal
    I'd really rather apple buy out the company. Despite my complaints about QuickTime, apple has been rather nice about keeping iTunes using mp3 for output, and more recently support Ogg Vorbis for playback. They might start including digital copies of music in addition to the CD tracks, and definitly wouldn't go to the extreme of copy protection schemes that crash macintoshes (anyone have a link?)

    • Re:Microsoft Records? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      [Apple]... more recently support Ogg Vorbis for playback

      Apple don't support Ogg Vorbis. There is no Apple quicktime component that supports Ogg Vorbis.

      Saying Apple supports Ogg is like saying Microsoft supports Ogg because winamp plays ogg files.

    • definitly wouldn't go to the extreme of copy protection schemes that crash macintoshes

      Heay! Maybe they'll come out with a DRM scheme that works on Macs but kills Windows machines! :)

      -
    • There are plugins to support Ogg in Quicktime and iTunes, but Ogg support isn't included by Apple.
  • Actually, didn't apple have some sort of agreement with Apple Corps. (The Beatles' label) about this very thing?

    • Re:"Apple Records" (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From Wikipedia article on Apple Records [wikipedia.org]:

      At one point, Apple Records sued Apple Computer for trademark infringment because the computer company broke their earlier agreement not to add sound to its computers. The case was settled out of court. Apple computers ever since have included a sound labelled sosumi ("So, sue me").

  • Floppy women? (Score:5, Funny)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:12PM (#5732461) Homepage Journal
    http://sdcc15.ucsd.edu/~mrossmas/recycle.html

    I think the fellow "recycling" floppies into star ships should construct a floppy woman. It may be the only chance he will get.

    High density

    Double sided

    write protect hole

    • Re:Floppy women? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2003 @01:18AM (#5733986) Homepage
      Top 10 reasons floppies are better than a woman:

      10. You may have to format them before you use them, but heay, it's cheaper than buying them dinner.
      9. You friends are always willing to give you one of their floppies they aren't using at the moment.
      8. You can pick them up ten at a time.
      7. They only remember what you want them to remember.
      6. Drive as long as you want, they never tell you to stop for directions.
      5. Foreplay consists of A:[enter]
      4. If you get bored you can always use them as frisbies.
      3. It's a lot easier to get rid of a virus you caught from a floppy.
      2. Floppies don't need an instruction manual.

      And the number one reason floppies are better than a woman...

      Floppies never ask FAT (Y/N)?

      -

  • Apple Trademark violation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:12PM (#5732462)
    Back when Apple Computers(AC( was founded, Apple Records(AR) (who put out the Beatles records in America) sued AC for the name Apple. AC had to agree not to go into the music recording business in order to use the name Apple. If AC makes this move into music recording, would they not be violating that agreement?

    • Re:Apple Trademark violation (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:17PM (#5732495)
      AR sued AC for including a MIDI adaptor (i think) with the apple II (i think). AC settled for a large sum and bought out the previous agreement.

      So no.

      • Re:Apple Trademark violation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:16PM (#5733034)
        AR sued AC for including a MIDI adaptor (i think) with the apple II (i think). AC settled for a large sum and bought out the previous agreement.

        Um, no. Apple Records sued Apple Computers because of the Apple][gs. The ][gs contained an Ensoniq synthesizer, making it the most powerful music composer on the market. Part of the agreement was that Apple Computers couldn't ever have a hardware synth solution. This is still true today. Apple Computers didn't buy any rights, and they are still not allowed to enter the record business.

        Search the web for "Ensoniq Apple lawsuit" for more information.
        • Wow. The things you learn. I've been out of the keyboard scene for a while now and didn't realize that E-Mu and Ensoniq had merged in 1999. Also didn't know that they were now owned by Creative. [cite [emu.com]] Creative is also an equal partner owner of THX now... makes me wonder what else they've been buying up.

  • Dell's Usb keychain offer is pants (Score:3, Informative)

    by Loosewire ( 628916 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:12PM (#5732463) Homepage Journal
    Apparently from a freind's company who buys lots of dells their Free USB keychain drive offer (Here in the UK at least) was only good for 1 week after they announced the removal of floppy disks. Please someone else tell me this is wrong :-(

  • Email regarding Evil Bit RFC (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bradee-oh! ( 459922 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:14PM (#5732473)
    Good Afternoon,

    What or who determines the "evilness" or "goodness" of the packet? If a security admin or OS can determine or flag bits as good, what keeps the hacker from spoofing this process by setting the bit to "good"? Does the bit change based on behavior? Or maybe a database with signatures of "bad" bits?

    (name deleted)
    Microsoft Corporation

    Dear (name deleted),

    The complete protocol is not yet formalized, but you can be assured that any packet from your companies domain should have the bit set.

    Signed,
    -All irrational slashdot readers who flame MS as a reflex

    (it's a joke, people)
    • Good Afternoon,

      What or who determines the "evilness" or "goodness" of the packet? If a security admin or OS can determine or flag bits as good, what keeps the hacker from spoofing this process by setting the bit to "good"? Does the bit change based on behavior? Or maybe a database with signatures of "bad" bits?

      (name deleted)
      Microsoft Corporation

      Now I understand why Microsoft products have troubled security records..... I don't think I will be buying your products any time soon....
      • Since the emails were likely received by SMTP, what reason do you have to believe MS actually wrote that?


        I guess it's correct becuase the firewall rejects packets with the evil bit!

      • Of course M$ can be trusted. They can be trusted to be evil!
      • Now I understand why Microsoft products have troubled security records..... I don't think I will be buying your products any time soon....

        I do believe that sir is confusing the evil bit with a more appropriate bit for Microsoft products. This will be introduced in a RFC to be released late March 2004, entitled Incompetant Software Author Bit.

  • Apple pulled a what out of its what?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by no_opinion ( 148098 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:15PM (#5732481)
    Said one former Apple exec: 'Apple always needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat. Universal is a pretty big rabbit.'

    You don't save a drowning man by throwing him another drowning man.
  • "Good Afternoon,

    What or who determines the "evilness" or "goodness" of the packet? If a security admin or OS can determine or flag bits as good, what keeps the hacker from spoofing this process by setting the bit to "good"? Does the bit change based on behavior? Or maybe a database with signatures of "bad" bits?

    (name deleted)
    Microsoft Corporation
    "

    It is actually quite easy to determine the evilness of a packet. If it comes from an IP assigned to the Microsoft corporation, then it is surely an evil packet

  • What's a Quine? (Score:5, Informative)

    by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:24PM (#5732531) Homepage Journal
    I hope I'm not the only one who didn't recognize what a "Quine" was, so here we go:

    A quine is a program that, when run, exactly reproduces its source code. Nifty - although not particularly useful, it's still kinda neat.

    Anyway, find quines in, uh, many languages at The Quine Page [nyx.net].

    • Well, it has something to do with a tortoise, an electron in a crystal in a magnetic field, and a meta-meta-meta genie.. I remember that much. Actually reading anything by W.V. Quine was quite impossible for me though, it's like reading RFCs... who the hell wou... uh nevermind.

    • Re:What's a Quine? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Ptolemarch ( 11506 )

      Nifty - although not particularly useful, it's still kinda neat.

      Quines are particularly useful, actually. It proves that there can, conceptually at least, exist a machine capable of replicating itself in full.

      As an example, nanotechnology presumes that we'll be able to build machines that could build exact copies of themselves, in order that we don't have to make machines to stamp out billions of microscopic nanites. Well, is this possible? It's tempting to just say "sure, of course", and it i

      • Actually (Score:3, Insightful)

        by xant ( 99438 )
        It is pretty easy to write a quine in the sense of "a program that prints its own source code", just open the file that contains the source code and dump it to stdout.

        This is not what über-coders think of as a quine, because it is a cheat, but it is (probably) what you want if you're producing a nanomachine that replicates itself. You don't want to reproduce the current state (which would lead to evolution and inevitably, if you believe Scott McNealy, gray goo) but the original state.
        • Very few operating systems let you open files that don't exist. If you don't have the source for a program in a file, then you can't very well open that file.

          • Re:Actually (Score:3, Insightful)

            by arkanes ( 521690 )
            All (worthwhile) operating systems let you open files that don't exist. Printing them usually isn't very usefull, though :P

      • It's not that hard, really. And, if you think it is some great deep programming secret, you're going to be disappointed when you actually go look at a quine and see how it's done. A certain classic Turing Award acceptance speech [acm.org] starts off the speech with probably one of the easiest-to-understand quines there is.

        Now go away and do it yourself, in some language. The end of this post is going to contain a quine-like construct, and I'd hate to give the secret away to someone who still wanted to discover i

  • RFC (Score:5, Funny)

    by genka ( 148122 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:26PM (#5732543) Homepage Journal
    It should be noted that if evil bit (RFC 3514) is used with TCP by Pigeon (RFC 1149), evil bit is dropped. In fact, a lot of evil bits are dropped

  • Quine (Score:5, Informative)

    by FosterSJC ( 466265 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:29PM (#5732552)
    For those not so programming-savvy (i.e. me, 5 minutes ago), a quine is "a program that generates a copy of its own source text as its complete output."

    Apparently Douglas Hofstadter (of GEB [barnesandnoble.com] fame)coined the phrase after logician Willard van Orman Quine [barnesandnoble.com].

    For more see: http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm [nyx.net]

  • evil bit (Score:4, Funny)

    by dna_(c)(tm)(r) ( 618003 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:40PM (#5732605)
    "[...]April 1st. (I believe you may have seen something on Slashdot about it.) "
    Yes, but could you please post a full story on it.

  • Upping their meds (Score:4, Funny)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchase@ho[ ]il.com ['tma' in gap]> on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:42PM (#5732619) Journal
    What did the very last guy say in Steve Bellovin's update? The guy from Microsoft? Sorry but my browser came up with a message "Error: content blocked (RFC3514)". Please tell...
  • What the hell is all that about?

    I didn't even know (or maybe chose to forget) about this Super-DMCA crap.

    What states has this passed in? It seems overly broad in scope and extremely scary. According to the article the laws are mainly meant for people hacking satellite and cable services. But damn, they're so broad it makes all sorts of things illegal.

    I find it completely bizzare that this is even going on... How stupid are our (US) government leaders?!

  • no such thing (Score:5, Funny)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaa&SPAM,yahoo,com> on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:44PM (#5732624) Journal
    There are no AOL users on the Internet there will never be, never!. AOL users are commiting suicide at the gateways of the internet and we will contune to encourage more suicides. AOL has never had any share of the market and at the moment is a small stupid little company that has no power what so ever. AOL never distrubited CD's or floppies. The author of the article is a liar. These are lies! lies i tell you!
    -Mhmd al-sharif, former iraqi information minister

  • Let this be the proof... (Score:4, Funny)

    by zurab ( 188064 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @07:53PM (#5732676)
    ... that Microsoft employees are extremely devoted to RFCs and all public standards. Here's a Microsoft employee who, in good faith, researched and tried to contribute to the development of a new RFC - all this before (s)he even got and read the manager's memo saying it was April 1st.

  • Clarification (Score:3, Interesting)

    by birdman666 ( 144812 ) <[moc.cam] [ta] [diercire]> on Monday April 14, 2003 @08:04PM (#5732716) Homepage
    Am I the only person who assumes Apple Computers would keep the name of Universal if they were to buy the record company, therefore flying under the radar. The agreement with Apple Corps was to avoid confusion in the marketplace. If the music products still carried the Universal name, wouldn't Apple Computers be in the clear even if they were the parent company?
  • Slashback tonight brings updates and clarifications on ... the Evil Bit RFC

    Nooooooo! Make it stop!

  • An exerpt from the quine (Score:4, Funny)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @08:27PM (#5732806) Homepage Journal
    Just in case it gets slashdotted of course.



    cock boob!!!! cock tits!!!! cock boob!!!! cock tits!!!! cock! tits cock!!! fuck smeg!! arse tits smeg boob fuck arse tits fuck! boob smeg! butt smeg! arse tits fuck!



    Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.

    Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

    If it won't make it through the lameness filter, how does it get posted as a non-lame story?

  • Build a hard drive wind chime... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jonah Hex ( 651948 ) <hexdotms @ g m a i l .com> on Monday April 14, 2003 @08:46PM (#5732902) Homepage Journal
    Since the days of the death of MFM hard drives I've been stripping dead drives of their platters and using them for wind chimes. The platters resonate with crystal clear tones when struck against each other, and I've never had one I couldn't use from notebook drives to IDE/SCSI drives.

    Besides the usual nylon line and a wooden dowel or two for the upper support, you do need a few different type of screwdriver bits, since most drives use odd shaped star/torx screwheads. If you have any trouble just grab a drill and destroy the screws, at this stage who cares about what the case ends up looking like. And a final tip, you may want to spray the platters with a thin clear coat if your putting them outside.

    Jonah Hex

  • evil bit (Score:3, Funny)

    by shadowbolt ( 624977 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @08:52PM (#5732924)
    Maybe somebody could re-iterate the evil bit story for me... I must have missed that one.

    Sometimes, when I eat something, I drink something. [www.homestarrunner.com]

  • One response was rather, umm, "interesting". I never knew that RFCs could inspire this sort of thought.
    I was reading your info about the proposed RFC and my mind and fingers strayed to check out my own evil bit...
    I've just got my breath back. Shouldn't there be a health warning about playing with your own bits?

  • Apple Records (Score:2, Informative)

    by Niscenus ( 267969 )
    Yes, Paul thought it had a ring to it, too. It's been a sub-division of EMI since just before Revolver.

    John and I, however, used a later song, and out of that (in dual non-pseudo-semi-indirecty-partnery-sub-divisionism ismism), we created Subafilms for our toonery attempts at an animaty-musi-movie.

    --Ringo
  • Too bad model rocketry is now illegal or he just might be able to make them fly like he wants.
  • Hey, it sounded good to me. Why not? ;-)
  • I believe you may have seen something on Slashdot about it

    Die....seriously....repost whores.
  • Maybe the MS guy/gal was just playing along. I would have thought it would be a weak attempt, but two weeks laters (s)he is still getting people.
  • What self-respecting geek could pass up the chance to call it a "Light Side/Dark Side" bit! This "Steve Bellovin" [att.com] sounds like a lightweight luser to me!

    Anyway, how much evil can one bit do anyway? Perhaps it's only a quasi-evil bit.

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Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you only have to climb it once.

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