a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

[astcell]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

I love that folks who did the tiniest but for this project still did more than 99.99% of the people who have yellow ribbons and "support the troops." The contributors tell by DOING. Believe me it does not go unnoticed.

[DaKahuna]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

I love that folks who did the tiniest but for this project still did more than 99.99% of the people who have yellow ribbons and "support the troops." The contributors tell by DOING. Believe me it does not go unnoticed.

Agree. Some people find it very easy to go buy a mangnetic ribbon to put on their car but can't be bothered to put together a small care package for the folks who are putting it all on the line

[not5150]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

Overseas Marines get the ultimate digital care package

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33977/135/

[renderman]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

Overseas Marines get the ultimate digital care package

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33977/135/

A nice bit of positive press. Hopefully it spurs others to help

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

wow, i wasn't expecting the piece to show up so quickly. maybe someone jumped the gun and posted a rough draft... there's a number of typos in there. heh, some of my quotes come off like i don't know how to form sentences in english.

all in all, i like the coverage. while i suppose i shouldn't care about the second paragraph getting a lot of details wrong about the original impetus (i didn't lose all my data, just some of it... and i had backups for about 70% of what i lost, i'm not a moron about policy, hehe) and the startup (while i love all you guys, you were only sending me data. nobody sent me hard drives, i bought them, haha) but i'm just a stickler for keeping facts straight. (and the pelican case isn't painted... the drive enclosures are... paint on the outside of a traveling case wouldn't last long, particularly in-country.)

ah well, still it's nice to get positive press like this for a hacker project.

[not5150]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

Ahh yeah we post fast because there's no copy editor (on the news side of things), but the bad thing is that mistakes get through.

I've gone through the article and cleaned up some of the mistakes.

[Thorn]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

Well done!

US Army Master Sergeant Robert McLaughlin delivered the drives to the embassy just to prove that the TTB project was real. McLaughlin, who is also the embassy’s Deputy Chief in the Office of Defense Cooperation, told us, “The guys here thought it was an urban legend.”

Wow. Deja vu. The quote seems strangely familiar, and yet, I've never heard of "Master Sergeant Robert McLaughlin."

[not5150]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

Ok, astcell and I just came up with this idea. He was trying to view a YouTube video and the internet is just dog slow over where he is at.

How hard would it be to make a drive dedicated to all YouTube videos? We've got tons of spare drives at the Tom's Hardware labs.

Hmm... I wonder how much YouTube 1 TB can hold :)

[panadero]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

Congrats Deviant!

"Hacker's project sends media-filled hard drives to troops"
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/22/h...ves-to-troops/

Engadget nonetheless...

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: a new happening - the Traveling Terabyte Project

How hard would it be to make a drive dedicated to all YouTube videos?

that wouldn't be too hard at all... heh, perhaps i should start the planning of a third addition to the TTB family. what color pelican case is most appropriate for such a category?

really, the only hard part would be converting .flv videos into a proper format. one of the rules of the TTB project is that all content on the drives must be in 100% open formats. no DRM or lame proprietary codecs are allowed.

all video is either MPEG or AVI container files encoded in XviD or DivX. all audio is either MP3 or occasionally AC3 on some of the high quality movies. (a couple of the music directories may be AC3, as well... like the original Dark Side of the Moon in quadraphonic. that's a real treat to hear, and obviously can't be handled by mere MP3 stereo.)

if there was a way to get GooTube content converted en-masse (i don't enjoy doing them by hand like i so often have to) it would make a terrific addition to the project.

[Deviant Ollam]

gonna have to get a proper web site up REALLY soon

wow, with this recent press exposure i see that it's become necessary for me to get a proper web site up really soon. i find myself fielding a lot of the same questions repeatedly so i'd love to get things in place in short order.

AST... the mail forwarder is working great and the web page presently works with a meta-refresh to my personal web server... so i assume all is well there. if i knock something up in terms of actual web content, could i upload it to you somehow in the next day or so? i leave for norway for a week on monday and would really like this in place before i go.

the other thing that will require additional help would be the forums. i really would like to have a forum tied to that web site, but my mod-fu isn't as great as that of some others here. could any of our mods suggest what software package would work best? is there anything that is freeware that isn't going to get totally owned in no time? most PHP bulletin boards i've put together for folks wind up being spammed to hell or full of fake users, etc. any suggestions on the best solution there would be a gift from heaven.

[Thorn]

Re: gonna have to get a proper web site up REALLY soon

wow, with this recent press exposure i see that it's become necessary for me to get a proper web site up really soon. i find myself fielding a lot of the same questions repeatedly so i'd love to get things in place in short order.

AST... the mail forwarder is working great and the web page presently works with a meta-refresh to my personal web server... so i assume all is well there. if i knock something up in terms of actual web content, could i upload it to you somehow in the next day or so? i leave for norway for a week on monday and would really like this in place before i go.

the other thing that will require additional help would be the forums. i really would like to have a forum tied to that web site, but my mod-fu isn't as great as that of some others here. could any of our mods suggest what software package would work best? is there anything that is freeware that isn't going to get totally owned in no time? most PHP bulletin boards i've put together for folks wind up being spammed to hell or full of fake users, etc. any suggestions on the best solution there would be a gift from heaven.

All of my experience as both a forum Mod and Admin has been with VBulletin. It costs $160 to purchase and $85 to lease. Details are here. It's a really good platform and worth the cost in my opinion. This is such a great project that 'd be more than happy to offer whatever help I can give you, whether that mean helping with setup, moderation or administration.

Also, TheCotMan and Con are the real experts on the backend stuff. My suggestion is to suck up to them bigtime.

[TheCotMan]

Re: gonna have to get a proper web site up REALLY soon

Also, TheCotMan and Con are the real experts on the backend stuff. My suggestion is to suck up to them bigtime.

Heh-heh. Well, it is a lot of work. Security is a huge temporal vortex that can pull in as much free time as you allow yourself to give up. Any standardized forum anti-spam system generally has automated bypass methods in the wild, or will quickly have such software. You can always add, "just one more layer," and, "strengthen existing layers," but for every customization you apply, that means more time requirements for each upgrade-- and when upgrades are encouraged because of security issues in software, your downtime increases, and your personal time is used even more.

I don't really want to discuss any specific on system or application configuration in the support software for forums, but I can talk with you about the forum settings.

The most important thing to support forums is to automate everything you can automate. I don't have to wait for new packages to be built by maintainers for forum-support software. I can build from source to get more control over the specific options, and libs used to build support applications. Scripts allow me to automate this process. When I get word of a security issue in a specific piece of forum support software, I can have a new build, built, and minimize downtime by preparing separate build environments-- making it *super* easy to fall back to an old build if there are serious problems with the new build.

Build a test-space. This is great to help avoid down-time in your production space, and lets you try out experimental things without the general public seeing them.

Things are busy enough on these forums that we actually have specialization now. One person entirely deals with Firewall rules, updates, and the network. Another person installed the base OS. Another person works all of the support software on the system, and adds more layers for security, another person is the primary forum admin, and then we have 2 more forum admins to fix serious problems, or deal with user promotion issues, and an army of moderators to deal with rules, users, spam, and steer the future of the forums. Last, but not least, we have all the people that participate and/or lurk, which is why the rest of us do what we do.

I couldn't do all the things I do if it wasn't for the moderators-- or I could, but would have to quit my day job.

Several DCG have abandoned their own public forums because of the spam problem, and the work required to maintain forums. Some have moved their primary forum location to use the Defcon Forums DCG spaces, and let us manage the spam problems, and help keep it running.

Encourage organizers and give them tools to make it easier for them to organize.

Last comment in this post... your moderators are volunteers. Treat them well, and do as little treading on any decisions they make. These people will stop helping when they no longer like visiting.

[Edit:]
OK. I lied. You can try talking to DT. If you just need a single forum for discussion of your project, and he likes the idea, we could provide such a forum here. However, if you had your own forum, you could have rules to make discussion of P&R be mandatory. ;-) Maybe there is an opportunity here to host space for community projects like yours.

[DaKahuna]

Re: gonna have to get a proper web site up REALLY soon

All of my experience as both a forum Mod and Admin has been with VBulletin. It costs $160 to purchase and $85 to lease.

let me know if this is the route you plan to go. I'd be willing to help with a cash contribution toward the purchase of a license.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: gonna have to get a proper web site up REALLY soon

let me know if this is the route you plan to go. I'd be willing to help with a cash contribution toward the purchase of a license.

my dear friend... you have already done so very much. this wouldn't have even gotten off the ground in the very beginning if it weren't for that first pelican case, and you were even over-generous when helping me to get that.