Ever noticed what brand your local elevators are? I have, but then again, that’s because I’m a geek. I should really make up an identification guide for linking some characteristic hardware features to certain brands on those installations where the original branding is stripped…

Here is the great master list, in order of subjective, or is it objective, quality, by brand:

Otis - these like to last FOREVER - banks of the original ‘Autotronic’ series are still serving happily to this day in a couple of Miami locations! The newer Otis stuff is damned good too… even hydraulic, which is usually the cheap and nasty product line for other brands.
Old-school Montgomery - Unusual nowadays, but still going strong. Of particular note, these have all relay controls, and are immune to even the most severe power surges!

Dover - These often go unlabelled. If you get in an elevator and the buttons are white squares with rounded off corners, and the floor indicator’s a fake LED dot matrix arrangement (it’s really a set of square light/transparent mask assemblies), you’ve got a Dover. The build quality’s good on their stuff, and installation quality tends to be a cut above the rest for some reason.

Thyssen-Krupp: Same as Dover. They bought Dover.. why not? The only reason I’m putting them a cut below is that a few cost-cutting measures seem to have made themselves visible.

Now we start to get to the ones I’m a little iffy about …

Kone / Montgomery Kone: The hardware’s starting to get a bit flimsy as we go down the list here. Traction elevators in this line seem to be prone to freaking out and getting stuck more than usual. Interior panels don’t fit right. I think the best feature Kone’s got going for them is their optical door edge sensor, which can reliably tell if a very small object (like someone’s finger) is in the way. I’ve seen the Kone sensors installed on older Otis stuff a lot. Installation quality, at least in the Miami area, is usually terrible!

A rotten old wood packing crate hanging from a moldy frayed sisal rope over a squeaky pulley dangling down the open center of a staircase - This is vastly preferable to what comes next… trust me.

Schindler - Total, unadulterated crap. Schindler elevators can be expected to break down quite regularly, in very interesting ways.  Even on brand new installations, Schindler elevators will make scraping and grinding noises, randomly fail to level at floors and sit there with the doors closed for long periods of time, or even slap into the springs at the bottom of the shaft at full speed for no particular reason. When I used to go to MDC Kendall campus, one building’s classrooms were only accessible via a pair of Schindler hydraulics, and I got very used to prying the doors open after the elevator slammed into the bottom after failing to level. Newer Schindler door hardware features a frighteningly oversized hatch restrictor mechanism which makes rescue of trapped passengers extremely difficult if access can’t be gained to the top of the cab… and the failure of a single weak plastic part causes the door to jam as soon as it closes, requiring the same rescue procedure. I declare these completely unacceptable.

Yep. There’s the list.

Connect to any of those, and you’ll find nothing other than someone else’s laptop. Perhaps some services will appear via Bonjour, Rendevous, or SMB announce thanks to ‘zero-configuration’ networking, but that’s all you’re going to find. Most likely, you will find one titled “Free Public WiFi”.
What is all this rubbish, and why is it there? The answer is pretty simple, really. The Windows operating system (which I do not use, for good reasons) remembers which wireless networks you were connected to permanently. This is probably a good thing, when you are connecting to ‘infrastructure’ networks with access points; it saves you from having to manually having to reselect the network each time you move from home to school, etc.

This behavior is at the very least stupid, and at the worst, disastrous, when applied to ad-hoc networks.

On an infrastructure network, the network is announced to and detected by the clients by the periodic transmission of a beacon frame. This beacon frame transmits some basic data, such as the network name. (If you’re curious as to exactly what’s in the beacon frame, there’s a nice article on that.)

On an ad-hoc network, every client transmits a beacon frame. Windows remembers to ‘connect’ to an unused ad-hoc network by beaconing… which essentially spams the airwaves with announcements of a network that goes nowhere.

This is, at the best, an inconvenient waste of power and source of interference to existing networks, and at the worst, a gaping security flaw.

Let me elaborate on the security concerns of this for a moment:

Remember the MS Blaster worm? The Blaster worm exploited a bug in the Windows networking stack to inject and execute its code, and to spread. An infected system with one of these wireless networks left on would immediately spread it to any other system that connected to it, probably because it too had been left on there.

Fortunately, the solution to this problem seems to be simple. Don’t connect to these junk networks, like ‘Free Public WiFi’, ‘hpsetup’, etc. Any business or home installation that offers free wireless Internet access will, almost without exception, have an access point. If you do connect to one of these, be sure to disconnect from it before moving to another location.

Mac users don’t have to worry about this; OS X won’t beacon an ad-hoc network unless you’ve chosen the “Create Network…” option. It’ll only connect to one it already sees beaconing.

You too can do your part to fight wireless LAN pollution! By making sure you’re not beaconing rubbish networks, you too can protect the world from the forces of evil!

A while back, a page was linked from the Enigma2000 mailing list, containing instructions from the CIA! It’s in German, but the section describing the encode/decode is pretty easily understood.

First, you get yourself some random numbers, and stick them in five digit groups. This group of random numbers must be at least as long as any encoded transmission you intend to send out.

Second, find a means of securely getting this list of random numbers to the recipient of your message. Historically, everything from sheets of paper to chewing gum have been used for this purpose. For the sake of security, this should be easily concealed, and easily destroyed once used.

Third, compose your message and use a substitution cipher to translate it into numbers. Here’s what the CIA apparently used:

(It’s kinda blurred, but the characters for 71, 83, and 88 have umulats.)
Note that the most commonly used letters are encoded to a single digit to save transmission time… clever.

Also note that this nutty thing has no apparent support for spaces, nor need for such…? If desired, one could probably do something like map A umulat to space. In fact, it would be better if you did not use the CIA’s code as a base, but created your own, for security reasons. I’m just using it as an example here.

Here’s an example message:

W  e  a r e  t  h  e  r o  b  o  t  s .
80 4  1 3 4  86 77 4  3 82 72 82 86 6 95

Next, we put it in 5 figure groups. 5 figure groups are not required, but all the cool kids are doing it that way. The CIA Count Control transmissions used to use 4FG’s. I’m using - as a filler to pad it up to a full group at the end.

80413 48677 43827 28286 69599

Well, that’s fine and dandy, but anyone who knows your substition cipher will be able to decipher your message, and that can be determined through fairly simple cryptanalysis. Now, we’re going to use a ‘one time pad’ to ensure that the message will be worthless to anyone who doesn’t have the key to decrypt it!

Still got those random numbers I told you to prepare? Ok, good. Here’s where we’ll use them. We’ll be adding digits of the random number list to the message to (reversibly) scramble it.

The adddition method has one quirk to it: in adding the digits, it will be possible to exceed 10. If you go over 10, just use the last digit of the result. For instance, 8 + 5 = 3.

Here’s our test message and some random numbers:

80413 48677 43827 28286 69599 < - Message
23455 92325 85678 23467 75887 <- One Time Pad
03868 30992 28495 41643 34376 <- Encrypted Sum

Now, find some creative and interesting way to transmit that encrypted sum…

Decrypting the message is the reverse of encrypting it. Get out your code sheet, and write down the recieved message. If you go below 0 in subtracting the one time pad digit from the message digit, plunk a 1 before the message digit, then subtract the pad digit and use only the ones digit…

03868 30992 28495 41643 34376 < - Encrypted message
23455 92325 85678 23467 75887 <- One Time Pad
80413 48677 43827 28286 69599 <- Decrypted Message

80 4 1 3 4 86 77 4 3 82 72 82 86 6 95 99
W  E A R E T  H  E R O  B  O  T  S .  -

I hope you like text without spaces. *g*

According to the CIA document, this is how the transmission would be formatted:

‘Message characteristic’ (repeat 3x), Group count, Line Number, message start tones, message.

Message characteristic is what SystranBox seemed to call the first element of the callup. It seems to be a serial number; hearing the same three digits here as in a previous message indicates the previous message will be repeated.

Group count is the number of 5 figure groups that will be contained in the message. Simple as that.

Line number indicates where to start on your page of random numbers to find the message key. It corresponds to the first 5 digit block on that line. Of course, the actual code is to be used starting AFTER that block… otherwise you’ve just given a bit of your message. Don’t do that!

Of course, different agencies have used this differently. The MI5 seems to just transmit the line number in the ‘Lincolnshire Poacher’ interval signal sequence. German intelligence would not send a line number, but would send a number identifying a particular agent to let them know to listen up. (Examples: Papa November, DFD21, other ‘2 letter’ stations). Cuba’s intelligence agency (Cuban government intelligence? Surely I jest … um… hi!) sends three 5-figure groups; one seems to contain digits that count off how many times a message has been resent, with the rest possibly being a key used by the computer software their field agents use to decode the transmission.

How you do this is up to you. Sending a line number is optional, but may make it more difficult for someone to decode your transmission if they somehow discover part of a one-time pad. Of course, never re-use your one time pads, and ensure that your agents securely destroy any one-time pads and decoded messages after use.

Voila… you’re cold war awesome! ]]> http://blueneon.xidus.net/bn/?feed=rss2&p=20
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Tue, 30 May 2006 05:59:21 +0000 VXO http://blueneon.xidus.net/bn/index.php/2006/05/30/how-to-give-your-students-an-exam-for-the-evil-bastard/ Well, let’s see here… I upgraded Wordpress and enabled Akismet, so hopefully I won’t be getting all those terrible little “Please moderate: OMGLOLDISCOUNTPHARMACY1387872348522!!!” emails. By the hundred. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you’ll see the Akismet Spam Counter indicating how many pots of meat product have been eaten!

… Anyway.

I also got a MORE tag out of the upgrade! I shall use it here.

Based on a class I’m taking now. Identity of professor protected to ensure I don’t get him pissed off… you state-tenured prick.
Anyway. If you just happen to be a professor, and you have a class with around 200 students in it, wherein the entire class score is from 3 exams… here’s how to give an exam… like an evil bastard. Bwahaha. More tag coming right up: Step 1: First off, you wait until all 200+ students are in the room, and then demand they all get up and move to different seats. This would kind of make sense, only it doesn’t, due to Step 5.

Step 2: Ask all students to turn cell phones off. Not just on silent… off. At this point, turn away anyone else who comes to the door. This is at 3 minutes before the scheduled start time.

Step 3: Have 30 assistants who were sitting down near the back get up and start randomly wandering the room, staring at people, and kicking out those who have the wrong kind of calculator (or none). One of the assistants now produces one of those cheap and nasty ‘Bug Detector’ devices that’s basically a preamp’d RF field strength meter, and walks around the room. Upon still seeing random pulses of signal on its display, this assistant motions to the professor, who threatens to have everyone kicked out of class on academic dishonesty charges if the device is not disabled. Eventually, the detector falls back to baseline after someone figures out their laptop wasn’t *really* off. 12 minutes of 110 wasted so far…

Step 4: Loudly shout at people over the room’s PA system (driving it WELL into clipping by at least 15dB) that they are to leave if they still have any notes out. Everyone just puts them away and doesn’t leave. Things will get worse yet, though. 5 more minutes mysteriously wasted.
Step 5: Have assistants (!) distribute the exam forms and Scantron sheets. There are six exams, and they’re distributed so that nobody next to each other has the same exam version. This kinda nullifies step 1 making any sense.

Step 6: Announce that you’re going to collect everything 15 minutes before the end of the class session, and that anyone who isn’t ready cannot turn in the exam.

Step 7: Waste 15 minutes giving weird instructions as to how to bubble in full name and student number offset by a certain number of digits on the answer sheet. Sure, it makes sense.. to someone out there. That’s all that matters, really.

We’re now at 32 minutes into the session, shortened by 15 at the end. That’s 47 minutes out of 110, 63 minutes remaining for the exam.

Step 8: Instruct students to start. Your 30 assistants are now to wander the room, staring over everyone’s shoulders.
Step 9: Wait 5 minutes and have your assistants snatch away the papers from in front of 10 selected students and kick them out with no explanation.

Step 10: Place illegible correction information on projection screen at the front of the room. KILL THE LIGHTS! At this point, take great pride in knowing that at least five problems on each exam do not have a correct answer listed.
Step 11: Kick out 3 more students for unknown reason… having campus police mysteriously show up to escort the last one out. ?!

Step 12: Wipe the projection after 2 minutes, then put up a giant ugly Javascript timer with a dumb animated gif background running on your laptop in a Safari window. Corrections are now no longer available…

Step 13: Ask for exams to be collected 5 minutes early. Collect them 15 minutes before the end anyway.

Step 14: Distribute grades.

(That, at the very top, was my score. 47. Note the distribution.)