Comments on: hackaday lazy afternoons

By: Sikat Pinoy

Sikat Pinoy — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:21:25 +0000

A good reference

By: michael r

michael r — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 01:52:15 +0000

I did the busy box first the way he did it, then i took an old phone and opened it up. crossed the wires in there. that way it looks like a normal phone but when it is plugged in it is a busy box.

By: spoonage

spoonage — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:10:45 +0000

The trick with having the Apple Student Dev discount is to stack it with the Educational discount as well. Don’t buy anything you can get outside, like ram or harddrives. Glowing keyboards are, of course, fine. That’s the way I did it.

By: CaptSnuffy

CaptSnuffy — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 21:28:44 +0000

i thought the same thing after i read that, if you can just short them in the box and it will work, why bother using the box anyway?

So i took a phone cable, and shorted the wires in it. I plugged it in and called from my other line to see what would happen. And it worked!

the result is the cutest busy box ever: http://tinyurl.com/78h93

By: whirlyman

whirlyman — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 20:42:12 +0000

Actually, you can do the busy box trick in a much simpler way. All you have to do is plug one end of a phone cord into line A and the other end into line B. Done. All the lines in the house will go dead. I did this in high school once to keep my teacher from calling my parents about a bad grade. Totally worked.

By: getoffmyporch

getoffmyporch — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 12:39:15 +0000

aww dude, you got my hopes way up the the apple discount, now i just have to go drown my sorrows

By: ryan

ryan — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 07:27:23 +0000

what does he mean “got” us with the crosswalk hack?… not that i beleived it or anything…

By: emilio

emilio — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:54:04 +0000

i bought a G5 with the student discount last summer (sadly, not the 3GHz i’d been hoping for), here’s how it works:

- sign up for it, prove you’re a student, and pay $99. if you’ve been thinking about taking some community college classes, maybe now is the time…

- you’ll get your ADC membership and an “asset” on the web site. an asset could be an instance of support or an Apple-conducted software test; in this case, it’s the mythical “once-in-a-lifetime” Hardward Purchase Program discount.

- shop the ADC store with your asset. the discount is 20% on (most) systems, and around 5-15% on peripherals, accessories, iPods, cheaper systems, etc. obviously, you’ll want to do this for a big purchase. to upgrade from my 7600+375MHz G3 card, i got a dual 2.5 G5 for $600 off (so really around $500 off, counting for the $99 ADC membership). i was able to get the G5 with AirPort, Bluetooth, the 250GB drive, and the extended warranty, plus tax, for under retail. not bad. slap an extra gig of ram and a 76GB Raptor in there and you just might have some real beef.

- to keep the giddy excitement going, you’ll get a Student Membership Mailing every month for the next year. usually it’s a CD or DVD of ADC content – fresh documentation, tools, SDKs, yadda yadda. whatever, i’m not much of a programmer. however, as someone noted, you get a FREE TEE SHIRT (yes, it’s the computing industry) and hard copies of new system updates. I got 10.3, 10.3.8, and two copies of 10.4 (standard and “User Install”, whatever that is).

By: dudemann

dudemann — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:50:24 +0000

well… ya got me on the crosswalk hack.. not that i tried it though.

i want a shirt! and a hat! and stickers! wooo!

By: Btatum

Btatum — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:08:40 +0000

The ADC discount for students pricing is available at http://developer.apple.com/membership/usa.html (just click the link). I bought my powerbook through this last year. Also they have sent me a mailing every month with software, as well as a new copy of Panther, and just recently the Tiger upgrade as well as the full install disc. All of this is available for download too once you are a member. Oh, and I got a shirt.

By: strazzere

strazzere — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 03:58:18 +0000

I did a little research ont he apple discount… called around too… For the 99$ ADC membership you will need to fax them proof that you are a student. Also students are given a “once-in-a-lifetime-deal” like he said, however it doesn’t state the prices for anything… placed a few calls but no one is really giving quotes. i shot of an email to someone i know who works for apple and hoping they’ll give me some quotes… cross your fingers! i’m hoping i can get a good ibook for 500$

By: iDB4.com

iDB4.com — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 03:38:55 +0000

Whats up with these polls? They are a waste of time and should be seperated from the main hack content.

We all come here for the cool links, not some crappy pointless polls!

Maybe you can seperate the meet ups from the main website too? As the will only apply to a small ammount of visitors.

Anyway, its a great site apart from these two things! :)

By: nick

nick — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 01:56:45 +0000

Sean, john is absolutely right. Your local telco’s switch (Exchange or whatever..) knows you have picked up your handset ONLY because by doing so you put a loop (Short) on the line. When a phone is ‘on hook’ there is no loop and nothing is happening (other than line voltage shows about -50v dc). When the phone is ‘off hook, (You picked it up) the local exchange see’s this and passes you dial tone at approx 400hz (In UK) and roughly 10v. The voltages will vary with your line length i.e distance to exchange. Try putting a multimeter onto your phone line and put loops on and you’ll see what I mean. Watch out for when somebody rings your line though as this can be upto 75v AC (VERY VERY low current though!) as this can surpise you and make you jump like a girl, v v embarrassing – especially if you work in telecomms ;-)

By: somedude

somedude — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 01:14:17 +0000

Just one question, will the t-shirts come in fat computer nerd xxxl?

By: John

John — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 00:21:49 +0000

To #5

Actually, no, shorting a phone line will not make it dead. It will just make a busy signal. Try it yourself!