hackaday links

posted May 12th 2005 1:37am by Vince Veneziani
filed under: Uncategorized

I’m happy and unhappy.
I’m happy with the fact that you guys have been commenting and you seem to really like the idea of a podcast. Woohoo. So keep commenting!

I’m unhappy with Firefox. Yes, the same Firefox that has more security holes than an anime character has spikes in it’s hair (goto flash site). I’m mad because Firefox has the lousiest support for flash on the mac. Period. I just had a wonderful hackaday links done, then sure enough, a flash site loads, takes control, and you have to force quit firefox. So psh. Use Safari RSS.

Therefore. Understand. You people seriously rock.
Here’s good links. Tasty, good, and fun.

The guy who hacked Cisco and stole their source code for IoS got busted.

Gotta love chess. Especially those nice looking glass ones that glow toxic green. [Chris]
Transmit audio through the frickin’ laser beam
This is a nice tidbit sent in. Check out how to record phone conversations from your phone to the pc. Hmmm

Comments [25]

Reader Comments

Where is the phone number????

Posted at 2:12 pm on May 12th, 2005 by JAKAL

Beige box? Uhh, a beige box is just a phone with aligator clips on the end. You mean a lunch box (1 way radio basicly) or a neon/tan box (which is what the modem mic thing is). Most modems do not allow you to listen in to the line unless its trying to dial, but in that case, I can see the beige box thing. ^_^

Posted at 2:39 pm on May 12th, 2005 by cde

I don’t know what you are talking about with the flash. I spend a good deal of my life playing Glod Strike at flasharcade.com in Firefox 1.0.2 for OS X Tiger on my powerbook. everything works great. Perhaps you have something corrupted.

cavebear42

Posted at 2:44 pm on May 12th, 2005 by cavebear42

Yeah, i agree with cavebear, even in Panther, my flash sites run beautiful on my mini, and just as well on my Blue and White G3 tower using Firefox. What sites are you trying, I’d like to try these myself to see if it may not be FireFox but the site itself.

Posted at 2:56 pm on May 12th, 2005 by leandroc76

Idea for the Laser Audio Transmitter: I’ve seen in movies where you can bounce a laser off a window, which will modulate with sounds near the window, and can be decoded with the reciever. Could this laser hack be used as a Laser listening device? VERY cool if it works. I guess I’ll have to get off my wallet and see :)

Posted at 3:02 pm on May 12th, 2005 by Sean

I had the same problem as you with Firefox and Flash. Just like you I blogged about it and just like you someone left a comment suggesting http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

It works great and when I really want to see something in Flash I switch over to Safari. Maybe if Safari had a Greasemonkey work-alike…

By the way, it’s listed in Bugzilla as Bug 106397

Posted at 3:15 pm on May 12th, 2005 by George Hotelling

I agree with cavebear, though I’m not a Mac-user firefox has never had any trouble with flash, it’s especially never been able to take hold of a browser window, something Java is more capable of.
you might want to look at the plugins RIP and adblock, more versatile than just flashblock by itself, to see about getting rid of the nasty elements. After you wipe it out and re-install to make sure nothing in chrome is broken/hijacked.

Posted at 3:29 pm on May 12th, 2005 by Ratty

Also, a tiny bit of an overreaction to how vulnerable firefox is. Did the flash page ‘just load’ or were you being careless? :P

Posted at 3:33 pm on May 12th, 2005 by Ratty

Flash works FINE in FireFox. What is this guy talking about?

Posted at 4:46 pm on May 12th, 2005 by GEmixman

vince, it isn’t firefox! it’s the flash plug-in! try it in safari or IE, flash sucks across all mac browsers! macromedia is definitely the people to blame here. their flash implementation is atrocious. When my dual 1.8Ghz G5 can’t run some pretty simple games, you know it’s bad.

Posted at 4:54 pm on May 12th, 2005 by micah buckley-farlee

Hey sean. I submitted the article to i-hacked yesterday. I did this project a year ago actually and had pretty good sucess with it. I’ve also seen on the net that you can bounce a laser off a window and bring it back as an audio source. It would be harder than crap, but I’m sure it could be done. Lining it up and the fact that only half your light is coming back… It would be fun to try. I may consider using it as a science project next year.
Glad you like the idea.

Posted at 5:46 pm on May 12th, 2005 by lehmon

Sean and lehmon. That is a pretty cool project that could definitely have some cool implementations.

As far as listening with the laser, I saw a show on TV a few years ago on either discovery or history channel. In the Cold War the Russians used the tech of lasers to ease drop on US buildings from their embassy etc. I believe they bounced it off of the windows. Take a lot of fine tuning and getting just the right angle to do it, but it is definitely possible. That is the reason for the weird looking gov. building (name is totally slipping my mind right now) built in DC then has the windows at such weird and alternating angles.

Posted at 6:09 pm on May 12th, 2005 by tjh

hello all.. Noticed the link to the CMP Dump was off.. so all post it in here the link to the main site then ppl can look at it .. :) we now have 2 of them..
Type 1 (Save Dump) Dumps only when u save the game
Type 2 (Live Dumper) Dumps at the push of a button makes live dumping vary fun :)

main site link is
http://www.codemasters-project.net/

hope u enjoy :)
and thanks for posting the information on your site..

Posted at 6:13 pm on May 12th, 2005 by Skiller

HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Posted at 6:52 pm on May 12th, 2005 by adam

adblock changed my life, but seriously, I think some people are looking for ways to badmouth firefox. I mean these are potential exploits yes but so are the exploits of the mac widgets on tiger. There will always be holes, I think the companies we’ll eventually keep are the ones that respond fastest, whichever that maybe. however I may be keeping firefox for a long time because of the aforementioned adblock.

Posted at 7:08 pm on May 12th, 2005 by dancnpete

I have the same problem vince does with flash on firefox on my mac. Its fine on my PC with firefox, I think its just a mac issue. Haven’t used any other browsers though. I can play flash movies but I can’t see them in firefox, doesn’t cause firefox to crash though. Dunno why it does this on some macs and others have no problems at all.

Posted at 7:11 pm on May 12th, 2005 by Scott

I hate to say this: but i knew this would happen (the firefox vuln. stuff) Its just like IE, the only reason its insecure is because 90% of the internet uses it, and its fast becoming that way with firefox. I’m not saying firefox will turn into IE, because firefox is fundamentally better than internet explorer. Its not the secure browser you all thought it was! As for me, im cruzing the net on Opera.

Posted at 8:01 pm on May 12th, 2005 by TTM

That laser audio project was from an old QST issue, around 1996 if I remember right.

Here’s how to build a laser bounce listener:

http://www.trilightzone.org/gbppr/mil/laserl/

Review U.S. patent 3,952,583 for more info on that.

Posted at 8:23 pm on May 12th, 2005 by RC:line

Would it be possible to use the laser idea with video? (I was thinking about a composite video source…)

Posted at 10:31 pm on May 12th, 2005 by tjh

As far as security holes go, Firefox has far fewerholes than IE, for example. You’ve been pretty harsh on it lately, and it’s unwarranted. You’ve linked to different articles about the SAME FLAW (although with three bug and security reports). Just because you read 15 articles on one flaw doesn’t make it 15 flaws. This is the first security flaw in Firefox that Secunia rated at it’s highest level, and it was effectively closed within 24 hours of being publicly known. The only reason it was publicly known was because someone who had the security access to the bug leaked the information before the final fix was released (obviously to impress his friends).

Posted at 12:57 am on May 13th, 2005 by Grey Hodge

Laser link ideas:
1. mount receiver in telescope, see how far you can get.
2. IP over laser pen?
3. Add light filter to reduce noise
4. Isn’t a phototransistor better (faster)?

I really like that hack’s simplicity.

Posted at 4:29 am on May 13th, 2005 by Hans

Anyone who expects firefox to be perfect is a fool, lets face it nothings perfect! But saying that, at least when security problems are found in firefox they patch them quickly…

Posted at 4:48 am on May 13th, 2005 by Andyk

There are programs designed to facilitate networking through sound cards. The ip over laser pen idea could work using this type of software! It would be slow, but definately worth looking in to. Line of Sight, a $20 laser could probably provide a 1 mile link!

Posted at 4:26 pm on May 13th, 2005 by Sean

don’t hate firefox for PROPRIETARY flash S***, flash is really SINGLE platform, x86. the only reason you have it on a mac is because apple made a deal for a proprietary version themselves. Hate flash not firefox.

and to help you some, make sure you use the latest flash, it works quite well as others have said, but prior versions are quite slow

Posted at 8:27 pm on May 13th, 2005 by martin bishop

The laser audio thing is pretty cool – but I’ve seen a kit where you can make them before at ramseykits.com – I have a URL below for anybody interested
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=LBC6K

Posted at 10:47 pm on May 14th, 2005 by slinker

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