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Education

The Power of the Hacking Community 92

Posted by Zonk from the look-at-things-sideways dept.
narramissic writes "In the world of business software, vendors routinely offer tools to help developers customize applications. Not so in the consumer space, where TiVo and Xbox are notable exceptions. This article offers and interesting look at what companies have to gain — and lose — by embracing the hacker community. From the article: 'One example is TiVo Inc., founded in 1997 to develop digital video technology that allows users to record TV shows. TiVo, based on Linux, is an extensible platform, and from its early days the company welcomed hackers and professional developers. "When we first came out no one knew what DVR was," said Richard Bullwinkle, vice president of products at entertainment networking company Mediabolic Inc., and formerly a senior member of TiVo's product marketing team. "So we made it hacker friendly."'"

Open Source Laser Business Opens In New York 96

Posted by kdawson from the burn-baby-burn dept.
ptorrone writes "If you can't stand the idea of a cookie-cutter laptop and you live in New York City, you have a new option: laser-etching. Phil Torrone, an editor at Make magazine, and Limor Fried, a former fellow at the tech-focused art studio Eyebeam R&D, are working together on Adafruit Laser Services, a new, by-appointment-only business in Manhattan that etches custom artwork onto customers' laptops, iPods, cell phones, and other gadgets." The entire business will be open source. From the Adafruit Laser Services site: "We are publishing how to use the high powered laser system, set up, techniques, business practices and templates. You could start your own laser business, we'll even help you."

Mystery of Ancient Calculator Finally Cracked 241

Posted by kdawson from the Curta-had-nothing-on-the-ancients dept.
jcaruso writes, "It's been more than 100 years since the discovery of the 2,000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, but researchers are only now figuring out how it works." From the article: "Since its discovery in 1902, the Antikythera Mechanism — with its intricate and baffling system of about 30 geared wheels — has been an enigma... During the last 50 years, researchers have identified various astronomical and calendar functions, including gears that mimic the movement of the sun and moon. But it has taken some of the most advanced technology of the 21st century to decipher during the past year the most advanced technology of the 1st century B.C."

A Giant DIY LED Display 69

Posted by CowboyNeal from the cross-town-messaging-systems dept.
smf28 writes "Dheera Venkatraman has created a giant DIY LED display featuring 36 blue Luxeons in a 6x6 array on the windows of Simmons Hall, an undergraduate dormitory at MIT famous (or infamous, if you wish) for its design. Recent uses included welcoming students in September, Pirate Day, and others."

Linux Hackers Reclaim the WRT54G 265

Posted by timothy from the bwuah-ha-ha dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The world's most ubiquitous wireless access point is free to run Linux again, thanks to a brilliant hack by db90h, aka Jeremy Collake. No soldering is required, as Collake's 'VxWorks Killer' nixes the WRT54G's VxWorks bootloader and installs a normal Broadcom one, allowing Linux to be installed easily. One distribution small enough for the series five WRT54G's 2MB of Flash and 8MB of RAM is the free DD-WRT project's "micro" edition. It lacks some of the fancier Linux router packages, such as nocat and IPv6, but does support PPPoE, and could be more stable than the VxWorks firmware, which seems to have generated mixed reviews." Update: 06/26 22:52 GMT by T : Note that the project's name is DD-WRT, not (as it was mistakenly rendered) WR-DDT. Check out the DD-WRT project's site.

Using Jet Engines to Cool Servers 109

Posted by Zonk from the yay-for-engineers dept.
rpmsci writes "The computer servers that fill huge data centers are producing more heat with every new generation of processors. It's a problem that's sending engineers on a search for cooling fans that are both small enough to fit inside ever-smaller server chassis and powerful enough to dispel increasing amounts of heat. At Hewlett-Packard, they've found one answer in an unexpected place: model jet airplanes."

HowTo Build a Quality DDR Deck 96

Posted by Zonk from the dance-till-the-revolution-comes dept.
Compu486 writes "In an effort to show that quality dance gaming systems can be done affordably, Inventgeek.com has put together an article showing how to make DDR systems better than arcade quality for not a lot of cash. Using this type of system and the free stepmania, hopefully schools in West Virginia can save some scratch and buy some modern text books."

Other Uses for an AGP Slot? 160

Posted by Cliff from the gfx-cards-have-gone-PCIx dept.
SleepyHappyDoc asks: "AGP seems to be going the way of the dinosaur, but there's still a lot of slots on legacy motherboards out there. If you don't have need for the graphical advantages of AGP (say, on a headless server), what else could you use the AGP slot for? Could the advantages of AGP over PCI be leveraged in a use other than graphics cards?"
Hardware Hacking

3COM's Ergo Audrey Hacked 134

Posted by timothy from the nifty-tiny-cheap-pick-any-three dept.
It looks like the 3COM Ergo Audrey hacking scene is finally taking off. A guy named Sowbug has hacked the 3COM Ergo Audrey to shell. He has pictures of it here(1) and here(2). Another site has opened to cover this hack, here(3). And of course the Linux Hacker messageboards are covering it quite a bit.
Handhelds

How Hackable Is The iPaq IA-1 Internet Appliance? 12

Posted by timothy from the you-can-change-the-color-of-the-cord dept.
BenTheDewpendent writes: "I am considering buying a Compaq iPaq IA-1 Internet Appliance if it is hackable. The IA-1 is relatively cheap and doesn't seem to be too bad in spec. I was wondering if anyone knows if they are hackable or usable beyond their intended semi-lame designed purpose?" There's a short (and lukewarm) review at TechTV about this machine which lists decent specs but objects to a highish price for what it contains. If you have a bargain, though, it sounds fun. Anyone have a succesful experiment with one of these cute boxes?
Hardware Hacking

Linux for the PlayStation 1 122

Posted by michael from the up-up-down-down-fsck-fsck-fsck dept.
OberonX writes: "Blockman Trading has released the alpha version of Runix, which is a working verion of Linux 2.4 kernel working with PS2. [ed. note: for the original Playstation, though they plan on porting to the PS2 also.] You can read an article about it at zdnet and you can download the 26MB file here. The final version is expected to be released by October while office software for PS1 is due by the end of the year. Pretty neat stuff..."
Hardware Hacking

DirecTV's Secret War On Hackers 619

Posted by michael from the not-as-think-as-you-dumb-we-were dept.
Belch writes "4 or more years ago DirecTV launched its service. DirecTV was one of the very first large distributors of smart card technology in their product. So much so, that Hughes corp. (the primary owner of DirecTV) decided to create their own smart cards. Each receiver has a smart card located inside that is keyed to the subscriber, and actively participates in the decryption of the digital satellite video stream. However, considering Hughes decided on this technology when it was virtually in its infancy, they made several mistakes. The hacker community caught onto these mistakes, and there has been a war between DirecTV and the hacking community ever since. For the past two or more years, it was apparent the hacking community would win this war, completely opening the DirecTV signal. However, over the last 6 months, DirecTV has fought back with a vengeance, displaying the most extensive technical campaign against the hacking of their product..." Click through for the rest of the story.
Hardware Hacking

Pinball 2000 + Ethernet = ... 93

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-a-cool-hack dept.
Eric Priepke writes: "I have 2 "Pinball 2000" machines, both of which I've added ethernet to. Via that ethernet, it's possible to telnet in to the pinball machine and get to a shell. I'm using that shell to dump out a bunch of statistic information on the games, and then build a web page with a backend perl script. Any time my games are on, the local FreeBSD box notices and updates the web pages every 1/2 hour." The link is to a mirror. Really impressive hack. Revenge from Mars is among my favorite pinball tables. Since Williams is giving up on Pinball 2000, it would be sweet to see if we couldn't make new games out of the old hardware.
Hardware Hacking

Boogie Bass Hacked 102

Posted by Hemos from the good-exercise dept.
vonmar writes "A 20-second re-recordable message has been hacked into the "Boogie Bass" talking fish. The audio is stored on an ISD 1420P solid-state chipcorder voice record/playback chip. The head, tail, and mouth movements are also re-recordable, and are stored in EEPROM inside an ATMEL AT89S8252 microcontroller. Read more about it at the creator's site."
Displays

Can You Reuse A Laptop's LCD? 16

Posted by Cliff from the neat-but-unlikely-hacks dept.
Josiah Dykstra asks: "I have a dying laptop computer, but a 14.1 inch LCD that still works fine. With the high cost of flat panel LCDs for desktops, is there a way to modify my laptop LCD and use it as the display device on my desktop?" Hmmm....homemade webpads, maybe?

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