Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Bekeley Professor gains the upper hand...

Berkeley laptop thief is scared out of his wits by professor. Mark Frauenfelder: The last few minutes of this video from a biology class at Berkeley is of professor explaining the terrifying consequences that will soon befall the student that stole his laptop. Hell, I'm 500 miles away from Berkeley and I'm scared after watching this. (Forward to 48:50. It's a RealPlayer file, unfortunately, so be prepared for it to stop playing at least three times while you're watching it). Link (Thanks Kevin!) UPDATE: Here's a torrent of the pertinent part of the video (In QuickTime, not Real!) Link (Thanks, Matt Yohe!) UPDATE:Sean Graham says: "For those people who don't want to deal with RealPlayer I made a very lo-fi mp3 of the audio from the "Stolen Laptop" lecture posted earlier today... "I trimmed out the actual educational part of the lecture and just left the 'good part.'" Link [Boing Boing] 5:06:07 PM     comment [] trackback []

StompBox!!! - Roll Your Own WiFi - Sweeeet!!!

HOWTO make your car a Wi-Fi hotspot. David Pescovitz: Tor Amundson hacked together a mobile 3G/WiFi Router powered by a car's cigarette lighter. He posted a detailed HOWTO guide under a Creative Commons License: It automatically boots up and links in to Verizon's "Broadband Access" service, turning itself into an access point. Turn on your laptop, join the network and voila -- you're on the net! It's just like using a hotspot (such as they have at Starbucks and airports), but it goes anywhere you car goes. As long as I've got an always-on internet link in the car, why not make it do other things? As part of this project I've made it do live vehicle tracking via Google Maps, upload pictures from an on-board web cam and other tricks. Why is it called a "StompBox"? I like to think of any nework I build as my own online "stomping grounds"... and I figured if I made a little box that would let me bring my stomping grounds with me wherever I went, I'd have to call it a Stomp Box. Link (via my journal at TheFeature) [Boing Boing] 4:48:14 PM     comment [] trackback []