When I did a university security course a few years ago that involved a contest to factor primes those of us who wanted to be competitive had to buy AWS processing time...
Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
61–70 of 224 posts
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The web is broken. Someone's website wouldn't scroll (I don't remember the details, and I don't think I wanted to find out --- maybe it was overflow: hidden, but it could've been something else), and the only way I could figure out to deal with it was to open up the devtools responsive design mode and pretend the screen was bigger than it was so that the full page could show, and then use the browser's scrollbar from…
I’m one of the few weirdos who actually seeks out and reads the ToS & privacy policy posted on sites I visit and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into a site with infinite scrolling and a footer (with all the “important” legal stuff) that a user will never see but for a fleeting moment. A feature or a bug? I’m never quite sure.
In the footer, there's also sometimes the language picker, the "desktop version" link (often acting as a button with same urls, so you can't just save it), and the dev docs links. There's a site where I have to specifically open a page that is not infinite to make sure I enabled the desktop mode before going back to whatever I actually came to do
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#63Ah yes, good memories. I'm having a really hard time right now remembering the name of that program that blocked access to the Finder; I think it was "Easy"-something. Google fails me on the name too. Breaking it was a hobby. Some school labs had left access to Hypercard available through that program, so you could just pull up Hypercard and make a new stack that would tell the program to quit. The other way to get a…
My school's computer lab ran Windows 3.1 for Workgroups on top of DOS. The network login prompt was in DOS. There were some hackers in upper grades who had installed games like DOOM, Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, etc. in a folder named Alt+255 on many of these computers, which looked like a space in DOS but was invisible to Windows Explorer. The lab manager found out about our Ctrl+Break hack and put in an event listener/h…
Wow, so this is very close to what we did in school. Us being the 'hackers'. By chance was this in Ohio?
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if a student even had their own printers set up. Students aren't allowed to have a printer? O_o
Printers used to be expensive and noisy. In 1993 I was one of about 3 people on a dorm floor of ultraturbonerds who had a printer in my room; it was a Canon BJ130, I think, which had the distinction of being a tractor-fed 300dpi black-and-white inkjet, and thus much much quieter than my friend's IBM ProPrinter 24XL. How much quieter? It wouldn't wake up people in the next room.
In 1988 when I was at Purdue, one of my roommates had a Coleco Adam. Presto, instant printer!
Buying a combination computer/printer was a terrible idea for longevity, but it helped me out a lot that year.
(Edit: stupid typo getting old)
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#65Anyone else's muscles still remember these keystrokes from the early 90's?
sm fa700 a9f4 pc fa700 g
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#66I'd like to clarify that my code was running only on machines that were otherwise idle. Not many people were in the lab late in the evenings. MPQS processing nodes could be added and removed dynamically, so if somebody needed a computer that was part of my cluster, they could just quit my program and everything would go back to normal. Also, once the number theory professor learned of what I had implemented, he worke…
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Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#67In 19 and 82 or 3, I worked at Lockheed Shipyard in Seattle, in a sort of tech writing capacity on a Navy ship building project, based on my recent experience in the Navy. The business closed with completion of the ships. We had to fill out lots of forms that documented what we called "analysis," and we'd often have to change them based on some factor changing. One change could cascade through the whole form. Paper f…
In the same time frame, I worked at Boeing doing design work on the 757. I didn't know how to do complex numbers using drafting tools, but I knew how to use a computer. The only computer in the building was an '11 in a special locked room with raised floor and A/C. It was under the control of Boeing Computer Services, a totally separate division from Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, which I worked for.
Anyhow, I befriended the sysadmin and he on the sly gave me an account and the code for the door. I wrote a bunch of numerical integration matrix programs, and showed the results to my lead, who told me computer results were all bullshit (he'd gotten bad numbers from them before) and called over his best draftsman, and told him to show me up (all in a friendly way, he was a great fellow).
The draftsman worked for two days, and came up with a sheet full of numbers to 3 significant digits. Mine were to 6. We compared, and one was wrong. He said my number was wrong. I knew it wasn't, because continuous functions don't have anomalous behavior. He good naturedly agreed to redo that one, and in a while came back and said my numbers were right. After that, my lead trusted my work, and I got all the math work in his group.
Eventually, some manager in BCS discovered I was making unauthorized use of the '11, and went several management levels over my head to demand I be censured. My lead (one of the engineering treasures at Boeing) went to bat for me. That went many levels up, and the BCS manager got a smackdown and was ordered to legitimize my usage.
In another incident, I got the job of writing some test plan specifications. The usual technique was to hand write them and hand them off to the secretary pool to type up. I get writer's cramps after handwriting 5 or 6 words. The secretary pool was in a special doored room full of Wang word processors. All women, and the supervisor was a woman. I asked for access to a Wang, as it was faster for me to type than hand write. She said ok, but I'd have to take the 2 week Wang course first. I asked if I could just have a look at the manual. She laughed and said sure. She was sure I'd fail.
I looked through it for a few moments, fired up the Wang and started editing. It was, after all, just a text editor. The supervisor was annoyed, but she kept her word.
If I'd stayed at Boeing I'd have likely been the first engineer to bring in my own PC for my desk, at my own expense.
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#68I remember in high school renaming programs to "calc.exe" so we could run them. Back when these kinds of protections were so primitive :-)
In my high school IT class we got to play Halo CE if we got all of our work done early. I made a play game batch script that started the game, but also planted a secret batch script with an unsuspecting name into your startup folder, that would open and close your CD drive at random intervals. The teacher let it go on for a week or two, he thought it was hilarious
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#69Apart from using hacking to overcome imposed limitations such as these, I am amazed by the number of times I had to use my chops to overcome what was simply a bug. Opening the web inspector is such a normal moment of dealing with other people's websites, I have no clue how people manage without it. I was very... surprised when I managed to productively use "javascript:(some code)" in the URL bar of the browser of my…
I remember the DSI bookmarklet community that utilized "javascript:". That was so long ago and I was so young, I don't even remember how I found out about them.
Re: Back in 1993, I was taking a number theory class
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We used to have to come knocking at the door if a student even had their own printers set up. What's wrong with having a printer?
If I had to guess the wording of completely insane contracts signed with companies that provide campus wide printing.
IOW just an extension of why they don't want you using libgen to get all of your books for free.