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Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

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Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#161

Post by withinboredom »

Tepix wrote: post #134
munificent wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To youths with curious mindsets, an anti-authoritarian streak, and seemingly limitless amounts of free time, little restrictions like these only improved our skills. Systems with challenging but imperfect security are a great way to foster new young talent. I miss the days when the stakes for testing boundaries and experimenting were lower.

I setup a MAC based internet filter at home, secretly hoping my kids will figure out how to bypass it.

Most OSs don’t let you change a WiFi’s MAC address these days. Sometimes even the hardware doesn’t support it.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#162

Post by withinboredom »

I remember discovering Cain & Abel in high school, then discovering that my principal (who had gone to the same high school years earlier) had logged into the computer I had for my keyboarding class. Turns out, he still used the same password a decade later… I had way too much fun with that password.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#163

Post by alibrarydweller »

ecshafer wrote: post #78
vuciv1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I graduated last year, and I worked for my colleges IT department. We used to have to come knocking at the door if a student even had their own printers set up. It definitely would not go well. That being said, I did know people who clogged the cs department's machines with batch jobs to train really expensive ML models that did God knows what. Its not the same as bypassing a security system, but it is an instance of…

I couldn't imagine a situation where if someone knocked on my dorm room door asking if I had a printer in there, I would not have told them off with very unflattering language and telling them to perform fellatio upon themselves. How many students are just rolling over and saying sorry? I would imagine most would give you a very hard time.

When I was in university IT ~2008 our main concern was people accidentally serving their own DCHP onto the network and colliding with ours, generally by plugging in a router LAN port out. I could imagine a decree with this goal saying "no personal devices" to keep it simple.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#164

Post by kqr »

DonHopkins wrote: post #159
kqr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you essentially invented the spreadsheet. Nice work! > Part of the calculation involved sorting. I didn't know anything about sorting, so I implemented what I later learned was bubble sort. Because that's obviously how you'd do that. I would like to politely contest the authenticity of this specific detail. In my fairly strong collection of evidence, people just do not bubble sort without being told ho…

Bubble sort is just fine if you're sure you'll only have a few items, or if it's likely that it might already be sorted, but it's still embarrassing admitting implementing it. Even Barack Obama knows that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_sort#Performance >The only significant advantage that bubble sort has over most other algorithms, even quicksort, but not insertion sort, is that the ability to detect that the…

What is so revealing about that Obama quote, the way I see it, is how dangerous it can be to "teach what not to do". There's a significant risk the student ends up just remembering the wrong way and none of the right ways.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#165

Post by teddyh »

krallja wrote: post #112
SavantIdiot wrote: post #86

It was a button that generated an NMI? How weird to put that on the front panel of a Mac. Then again Sculley was doing some weird stuff...

The programmer’s key came with the original Macintosh, letting you hit NMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_key

IIRC, the keyboard “Restore” key on the Commodore 64 also generated its own interrupt.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#166

Post by onion2k »

throwaway77770 wrote: post #147
onion2k wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web is broken. When an app on your computer or phone doesn't work well do you say Windows or iOS is broken, or do you say the app is broken? A broken website doesn't mean the web is broken.

The grain of the web is so that it's much easier to write something broken than something that works. That's true of all development, granted, but doubly so the web, so yep... the web is broken.

Most websites work quite well.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#168

Post by _57jb »

Why is using Twitter for telling a story a thing.

People that are smart as hell using a tool built around what feels like mental whiplash to tell a relatively complex story.

I actually think there is value with Twitter applying pressure and economy of words (I would fall into the category of over-explainer) helping folks like myself be more concise, but can't the story just go here?

Thinking out loud I'm sure there is an approach towards multiple networks being hit simultaneously but it'd really be nice if linking to a Twitter thread roll-up just automatically dumped the whole text here without needing to click into and pull in ${threadReaderTooling}

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#169

Post by DonHopkins »

kqr wrote: post #164
DonHopkins wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubble sort is just fine if you're sure you'll only have a few items, or if it's likely that it might already be sorted, but it's still embarrassing admitting implementing it. Even Barack Obama knows that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_sort#Performance >The only significant advantage that bubble sort has over most other algorithms, even quicksort, but not insertion sort, is that the ability to detect that the…

What is so revealing about that Obama quote, the way I see it, is how dangerous it can be to "teach what not to do". There's a significant risk the student ends up just remembering the wrong way and none of the right ways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BEANS

Do NOT click on the red button.

Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class

#170

Post by Someone »

elengyel wrote: post #93
Someone wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could enter that program in the system monitor, but I needed a way to run it. The simple way: in that mini debugger, the ‘G’ command (for ‘Go’) takes an optional address and jumps to it. “G 40F6D8”, for example, continued execution at address 40F6D8.

I don't remember the exact details, but I did try the G command, and it didn't work out. The problem was something like the program had nowhere to return to, so just ending with RTS would crash, and ending with a call to ExitToShell() would just restart At Ease and put you right back in the secure environment. I had to trick the computer into executing the program as a subroutine from inside another running program,…

I thought the _Launch call to start a new program killed the current program, so I didn’t consider how to return to the original program. However, they my have changed that when MultiFinder was introduced.

I guess the proper way would have been to JMP to wherever a bare ‘G’ would have returned, not an RTS (if there is a proper way to do this kind of thing. I’m not sure the system guaranteed what you could do at that time. You might be in a memory manager call, which meant any drawing calls were off limits)

Fun memories.

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