Tack (hardware)

“ Application of Hardware.—Owing to the fact that hardware has become more intricate in its manufacture and therefore more complicated in its construction, it is found that the proper amount of intelligence is not always exercised in its application. Frequently it is applied so carelessly that the hardware practically loses its most essential features. In the case of mortise-lock sets, all of the better grades are made with easy springs, so that the door will close gently and surely. ”

“ An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap (see boot) code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the network that has happened to crash. Machines depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. ”

“ The system consists of an LSI-11, 28K of memory, 2 Diablo disks, an LA30 DECWRITER, a Diablo HYTYPE-I printer, a VDM-1 display, and dual floppy disk drives. Obtaining an operating system which would effectively utilize all of this hardware initially appeared to be much too expensive for an individual to buy, and far too complex to write from scratch. ”

“ In the event of a maintenance problem, the software was designed to transmit coded error messages describing the symptoms of the problem only if supplied with a valid password. [146] Custom Hardware Engineering (“CHE”) was a competitor of StorageTek’s in the aftermarket for technical service and maintenance of StorageTek’s products. To access the maintenance error codes on tape libraries manufactured by StorageTek, CHE designed two devices to circumvent StorageTek’s password protection system. ”

“ They were designed to do damage not only to the data, but to the computer hardware itself. Some were designed to overload communications ports with tight logical loops. Others were designed to destroy the hard disk by directly overdriving the disk or would cause amonitor to self-destruct. There is no limit to the possibilities.
"You sound as though you hold their skills in high regard, Doc- tor." Rickfield continued to make snide remarks whenever possi- ble.
"Yessir, I do. Many of them have extraordinary skills, that are unfortunately misguided. They are a new breed of bored criminal." ”

“ Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like {dusty deck} or {gonkulator}, but connotes that the thing described is not just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity. "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...." ”

“ Thus the rapid pace of technological evolution would quickly render obsolete any attempt to draw distinctions among customer-premises equipment based on processing functions. We concluded that classifying CPE as either communications or data processing could impede a vendor's ability to refine and adapt its equipment offerings to user requirements through various processing applications accomplished by simple "software" or "hardware" changes to existing equipment. Implicit in this is the recognition that the uses to which CPE may be put are under the user's, not the carrier's, control. ”

“ With these tiny components and new circuit modes a supercomputer could be built, stored with information, and programmed to solve what one of the participants called the most difficult problem the human being faces today—that of bargaining.
This computer has not yet been built; it won’t be for some time. But design and fabrication are moving in that direction on a number of fronts. One of these fronts is that of hardware, the components used in building up the computer circuitry. In a decade we moved from vacuum tubes to transistors to thin-film 252devices. ”

“ New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an operating system, an HLL, or even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of bit bashing needed to create these basic tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development environment. ”

“ When you prefer an extra-large, extra-sharp screen and giant memory and when you can’t easily find micros of comparable quality. Here, too, I’m skeptical. The gap between micro hardware and the dedicateds is narrowing.
5. When you’re looking for a machine that will run special software that the micros won’t. Fondly, a Hollywood writer-director tells of a script-formating program “dreamed up by some lunatic in northern California.” Nowadays, however, moremore programmers are writing for micros than for dedicated word processors. ”

“ Software that has some important functionality deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working version. 2. [Cambridge] Variety of {guiltware} that exhorts you to donate to some charity (compare {careware}, {nagware}) . 3. Hardware deliberately crippled, which can be upgraded to a more expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper) .
An excellent example of crippleware (sense 3) is Intel's 486SX chip, which is a standard 486DX chip with the co-processor dyked out (in some early versions it was present but disabled) . ”

“ Take the works. Take the guy's computer. Take his books. Take his notebooks. Take the electronic drafts of his love letters. Take his Walkman. Take his wife's computer. Take his dad's computer. Take his kid sister's computer. Take his employer's computer. Take his compact disks—they MIGHT be CD-ROM disks, cunningly disguised as pop music. Take his laser printer—he might have hidden something vital in the printer's 5meg of memory. Take his software manuals and hardware documentation. Take his science-fiction novels and his simulation-gaming books. ”

“ A hacker's personal machine, especially one he or she owns. "Yeah? Well, *my* home box runs a full 4.2 BSD, so there!"
:hook: n. A software or hardware feature included in order to simplify later additions or changes by a user. For example, a simple program that prints numbers might always print them in base 10, but a more flexible version would let a variable determine what base to use; setting the variable to 5 would make the program print numbers in base 5. ”

“ However, significant advances in computer hardware and software have been made since that time. In particular, dramatic advances in large-scale integrated circuitry and microprocessor technology have permitted fabrication of mini-computers, micro-computers, and other special purpose devices, which are capable of duplicating many of the data-manipulative capabilities which were previously available only at centralized locations housing large scale general-purpose computers. ”

“ Yes, they appear to be sophisticated and capable. But they took advantages of weaknesses that were in that software from its creation. As we talked about a moment ago, insecure software and hardware is a key challenge we face. ”

“ All hardware is susceptible to failure through ageing, physical damage and environmental change. To ensure that error propagation is confined to non-sensitive functions, i.e., that the system fails safely, malfunctions must be detected immediately. ”

“ Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most hackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program behavior in terms of wants and desires. ”

“ A special-purpose chip or hardware system built to perform {blit} operations, esp. used for fast implementation of bit-mapped graphics. The Commodore Amiga and a few other micros have these, but in 1991 the trend is away from them (however, see {cycle of reincarnation}) . Syn. {raster blaster}.
:blivet: /bliv'*t/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. ”

“ A recipe for inducing hardware damage on a machine via insertion of invalid values (see poke) into a memory-mapped control register; used esp. of various fairly well-known tricks on bitty boxes without hardware memory management (such as the IBM PC and Commodore PET) that can overload and trash analog electronics in the monitor. See also HCF.
Node:
kilo-
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KIPS
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killer poke
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= K =
kilo- pref. ”

“ The hardware used in building construction may be classified as staple and finished. Staple hardware may be considered as including such materials as nails and spikes, bolts and screws, sash weights, and other materials of this character, while finished hardware may include such devices and appliances as locks and latches, hinges, door and window trimmings, and the various metallic fixtures used in equipping the different classes of buildings. To this last classification the term builders’ hardware is frequently applied.
Strictly speaking, glass cannot be considered as hardware ”

“ A coded tape, generated by a computer, controls the milling machine, drill press, or shaper more accurately than the human machinist could. In effect, the computer studies a blueprint and punches out instructions on tape that tell the machine what it is to do, how much of it, and for how long. Huge shaping and contouring machines munch chunks of metal from blanks to form them into complex three-dimensional shapes. Remington Rand UNIVAC and IBM are among the companies producing computers for this purpose. ”

“ But that's not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We're not making a computer that runs only the "appliance" app; we're making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn't want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box. ”

“ To remove or disable a portion of something, as a wire from a computer or a subroutine from a program. A standard slogan is "When in doubt, dike it out". (The implication is that it is usually more effective to attack software problems by reducing complexity than by increasing it.) The word `dikes' is widely used among mechanics and engineers to mean `diagonal cutters', esp. a heavy-duty metal-cutting device, but may also refer to a kind of wire-cutters used by electronics techs. To `dike something out' means to use such cutters to remove something. ”

“ I held up a laptop Jolu and I had rebuilt the night before, from the ground up. "I trust this machine. Every component in it was laid by our own hands. It's running a fresh out-of-the-box version of ParanoidLinux, booted off of the DVD. If there's a trustworthy computer left anywhere in the world, this might well be it.
"I've got a key-generator loaded here. You come up here and give it some random input -- mash the keys, wiggle the mouse -- and it will use that as the seed to create a random public- and private key for you, which it will display on the screen. ”

“ Through a cable called a null modem, you can pipe valuable reports from your portable to a larger computer a few feet away. You may want to do this, anyhow. Your lap-sized computer simply may run out of storage room much more quickly than a bigger machine and may lack floppy disks to spread those bits and bytes around. So make sure your portable software lets you zip material back and forth between machines. ”

“ On left is an array of 16 analog computers; at right is a large digital data-processing system.
The facility can perform scientific and business tasks simultaneously.
The dictionary also gives us a good clue to the digital computer: “Digital.—Of the fingers or digits.” A digital machine deals in digits, or discrete units, in its calculations. For instance, if we ask it to multiply 2 times 2, it answers that the product is exactly 4. A slide rule, which we have said is an analog device, might yield an answer of 3.98 or 4.02, depending on the quality of its workmanship and our eyesight. ”

“ Vulnerability of electronic data-processing media 55. It is sometimes inferred that a degree of security is provided by the inability of humans to translate machine-readable data in the form of punched holes in cards or tape, magnetic states on tapes, drums and disks, and electrical states in processing or transmission circuits. In practice, not only can such computerized information codes be readily interpreted by most technical personnel, but the data obscurity created has the additional negative effect of creating identification and accounting problems. ”

“ Most dongles on the market today (1991) will pass data through the port and monitor for {magic} codes (and combinations of status lines) with minimal if any interference with devices further down the line —- this innovation was necessary to allow daisy-chained dongles for multiple pieces of software. The devices are still not widely used, as the industry has moved away from copy-protection schemes in general. 2. By extension, any physical electronic key or transferrable ID required for a program to function. See {dongle-disk}. ”