Wikipedia has a list of all of the big pranks that have happened. The list is growing fast, enjoy the hilarity.
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2006-03-30
Print from your laptop to your wall using a can of spraypaint and string
This is the coolest thing ever! Two electronics engineering students in Zurich made this simple but intriguing way of printing from their tiny laptop to a wall of just about any size using a can of spray paint, some string, and two tiny motors. It's hypnotic to watch!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
2006-03-28
So we received our Treo 700W's today. It felt like Christmas as we all scrambled to rip open the boxes and start checking the phone out. The verdict is still out as to whether or not I like the 700W. The screen resolution, color depth, and clarity puts the Treo 600 to shame. It's about the same as the 650. The built-in camera will let you take 1280 x 1024 resolution pictures...which means you can actually use this as a camera if you wanted to. The camera on the 600 was a joke. The really fun stuff began when I pointed the IE browser to my.orb.com and logged into my HTPC box at home. I selected a Seinfeld episode and hit play...and I didn't expect really much to happen. To my astonishment, it started buffering for about 5 seconds and then...it streamed Seinfeld to my phone using Windows Media Player. The quality was actually quite good for being a phone. I have to break open the piggy bank soon and get a 2 GB SD card so that I can take my shows to go. When you put the display in full-screen mode, it's totally watchable. The sound is great too. Neither video nor sound had any jitters. My manager in Boise hit my Orb service and said that he was able to view the video, but it was pretty jittery. Boise won't have EVDO service until around November 2006, so they're going to have to wait before they get to experience streaming onto a cell phone up there.
All in all, I was quite impressed. It still takes a couple seconds for my brain to grok the Windows Mobile interface each time I want to do something. The phone quality itself is average, although the real test will happen tomorrow when I take it down to the datacenter and try making calls inside the cage. Usually what happens is that I lose my voice because I'm yelling so loudly, my battery quickly drains because the reception is so bad, and the receiving end gets frustrated and annoyed since all they hear is 8 million fans drowning out my cries. I don't think this phone will be much better, but here's hoping.
All in all, I was quite impressed. It still takes a couple seconds for my brain to grok the Windows Mobile interface each time I want to do something. The phone quality itself is average, although the real test will happen tomorrow when I take it down to the datacenter and try making calls inside the cage. Usually what happens is that I lose my voice because I'm yelling so loudly, my battery quickly drains because the reception is so bad, and the receiving end gets frustrated and annoyed since all they hear is 8 million fans drowning out my cries. I don't think this phone will be much better, but here's hoping.
2006-03-27
A friend of mine sent me a link to this News.com article which talked about being able to use Slingbox on your cell phone. Now, I definitely think this is a very cool idea. I'm not a huge TV fanatic, however I do see the convenience in being able to watch TV while on the go.
I already spent way too much on my HTPC project, so the idea of paying another $250 for the Slingbox is not one I'm likely to entertain. Now, as coincidence would have it, my work is issuing out Treo 700W's to all the system / network admins this week. I think the combination of my HTPC + Orb + TCPMP will equal a pretty good project for me to write up about. If my friend does end up getting the Slingbox, I'll try to get him to write up a review on that as well. I don't think Orb's video is going to match up with the Slingbox...but on a 240 x 240 cell phone screen, will I notice the difference?
I already spent way too much on my HTPC project, so the idea of paying another $250 for the Slingbox is not one I'm likely to entertain. Now, as coincidence would have it, my work is issuing out Treo 700W's to all the system / network admins this week. I think the combination of my HTPC + Orb + TCPMP will equal a pretty good project for me to write up about. If my friend does end up getting the Slingbox, I'll try to get him to write up a review on that as well. I don't think Orb's video is going to match up with the Slingbox...but on a 240 x 240 cell phone screen, will I notice the difference?
2006-03-24
So today I got my hands on our Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) server. I don't know all the features yet, but from the outside it's literally just Linux on a Dell Poweredge server. When you login to the box you don't get a shell, it drops you into this Cisco environment where you can issue a bunch of commands like
Which just runs tethereal and displays packets in realtime. This isn't impressive since you can just run tcpdump or tethereal on the command line and get the exact same effect. This isn't the IPS's main feature however, it's just one tool an admin can use to see what's going on.
Once you've fully configured the IPS server the real fun begins. It will analyze *all* traffic on your network and can automatically make ACL updates on your PIX, switch or router. You can setup event action filters, and use built-in and custom signatures in conjunction with risk ratings that the IPS will calculate in order to automatically deny packets that have a strong probability of being malicious. Once you set everything up, you can monitor the different packets that the IPS server sees as possible attacks, but not do anything with them yet besides logging. This will give you a better idea as to what the IPS sees, since false positives are inevitable. Once tuned though, I see this device being very helpful in keeping a 24/7 watchdog on what's entering our network.
packet display fa0/0
Which just runs tethereal and displays packets in realtime. This isn't impressive since you can just run tcpdump or tethereal on the command line and get the exact same effect. This isn't the IPS's main feature however, it's just one tool an admin can use to see what's going on.
Once you've fully configured the IPS server the real fun begins. It will analyze *all* traffic on your network and can automatically make ACL updates on your PIX, switch or router. You can setup event action filters, and use built-in and custom signatures in conjunction with risk ratings that the IPS will calculate in order to automatically deny packets that have a strong probability of being malicious. Once you set everything up, you can monitor the different packets that the IPS server sees as possible attacks, but not do anything with them yet besides logging. This will give you a better idea as to what the IPS sees, since false positives are inevitable. Once tuned though, I see this device being very helpful in keeping a 24/7 watchdog on what's entering our network.
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