So if you remember my first printer, and how excited I was, then you'll know I'm even more excited for this! It's the second printer, and it's a CNC now too! Awesome! Well, please vote for it, and try and get the word out so other people can vote for it!

Link: http://www.instructables.com/id/Lego-CNC3D-printerplotter/


On a side note, sorry I haven't been around much.  Omnimaga loads super super super slowly from my school, or sometimes not even at all.  It took a few minutes to load from here, too.  I guess I need more internet points.  Anyway, sorry I haven't been around much.

Go Omnimaga!

Oh, and did I mention there are 3D printers up for grabs. Yes, I'm excited. A grid of all the emoticons Omnimaga has wouldn't be enough to express my excitement!

If you have ever used linux, you most likely have run into the problem of a user account not being in the sudoers file.  The strange thing is that it says that it hsa been reported.  Scary, right?  But when it's on your own server, who on earth is it reported to?  I thought it was just some warning or whatever having the same effect as a "keep out" sign.  Well, guess what.  I was wrong.

I was attempting to set up a mail server to be able to automate a few things simply by emailing the server.  For example, downloading a video where the site that hosts the video is blocked.  I created an account called fmaster in order to try the mail server.  Well, I messed up in the creation of the account, and apparently didn't give the account sudo privileges.  No big deal, right, I just switch back over to the main account that has sudo privileges and that's that.  Of course, the only reason that I knew fmaster didn't have sudo powers was because it complained and told me I wasn't a sudoer, and it was being reported.  Okay, whatever, no big deal, right?

So I check where the mailbox is and notice it is at /var/mail/fmaster.  So I just cd over into /var/mail/ and see two different files.  fmaster and nobody. I was surprised because nobody had an account called "nobody".  So I used "sudo cat nobody" to list the contents of the file.  I found that it was a message sent automatically from the root account saying that fmaster didn't have sudo access, the command it was trying to run, and other useful tidbits of information.

So now you know, boys and girls.  When you aren't a sudoer, and it says you have been reported, it reports it to nobody!!!

If someone says "/me says hi to graphmastur", then it won't highlight and bold it even though it says my username. I'm assuming it has to do with it being a "/me" thing.

So, TAO: Unleashed needs a main menu? And since I fail at making anything larger than 1x1, I'm asking YOU to help me out! Best one wins their username/name in the game.

Okay, so the basic idea is it has to have 3 things:
1) The name in it.  Creative, but readable.  TAO is a lot bigger than unleashed.
2) Room for me to have 3 options "Play", "Credits", and "Exit".  There will be a sword about 8 (length) x 5 (height) pointing to each of the Play/Credits/Exit options (Now known as PCE for simplicity).  So, anything like that would work.  If you want to try your hand at the sword, be my guest.
3) It's gotta be very interesting.  The idea is "beasts" unleashed.  It also has the connotation of being Light vs. Dark.  So, anything with that is nice.

I'm looking for monochrome, but if you can give me 3 lvl grayscale, I'll accept that as well.

Thank you, and good luck!

EDIT: Also, full TI-83/84 screen is the size that needs to be made.

So, I'm trying to compile IOUSBFamily-343.4.3.  It's difficult. I've almost got it, but it gives me this message that says that it can't be both -dynamic and -static. I don't have a clue what that means, but I know it needs to be dynamic.

So, I'm wondering how many xcode/mac users there are, and if anyone can help me with this?

No, I can't post code. It's the driver for USB on macs. It's available at opensource.apple.com.

Also, if you are an apple-hater, don't hate on me. ;-)

EDIT: For the record, the reason I'm doing this is because I'm adding data-logging to the usb device. If you know of a mac usb logger that is free, please tell me.

Okay, so say I have 7 values that add up to 255. A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.  So, (A+B+C+D+E+F+G)=255.  How, in Axe, can I choose one of them, when their values are weighted toward the probability of choosing that one. Eg, if one of them is 0, then it has no chance of being picked, and if one is 255, then it is guaranteed to get picked.  Thats how they are weighted. So, is that understandable? I basically want this to be simple, in the axe programming language, and return the number from 0-7 of which number it should pick.

The easiest I thought would be to assume that they are all lined up, then find a random number between 0 and 255, and whichever "sector" it landed in, that was the attack.  The problem is, that I'm not quite sure how to do this, and not sure how good this would be.

So, please give advice.

Please vote yes or no for each pair of options.  Please do not vote yes and no for the same option.  Discuss and suggest options bellow.  This is for me to get a better idea for what people want on this calc.  Please ignore the fact that it might not be acceptable on the ACT/SAT.  (For example, the touchscreen)  This is kinda what your dream calc would have.

Happy voting.

Okay, so many people want to break RSA security because of the Nspire.  Well, it's not at all easy, and the current algorithms won't even work well on a 1024 bit number.  So I was thinking, that if an entire calculator community put their heads together, then we might actually think of a workable algorithm.  Now then, first I will explain RSA.

RSA is a public/private key cryptography system.  You have a public key (n,e) and a private key (n,d).  When you "break" RSA, it means that you found the private key using the public key.  Now then, I will show you how you get n, d, and e, and why it is so difficult to break as n grows larger.

The basis of the algorithm is simple.  You find two prime numbers, p and q, that are somewhat close together (about the same bit-length).  You set n=pq.  Now, n is a semi-prime, which means it is a multiple of two primes.  You then choose an e (most common one is 65537 or 2^16+1).  You find the totient function (which in the case of primes is p-1), so you set t=(p-1)(q-1).  Now you use an algorithm (Extended Euclidean) to find d such that de-1 is divisible by t.

With the Nspire keys, we have the public key: n and the exponent (most likely 65537, but that doesn't really matter), and we need to find the private key: n and d.

Finding d using e and the totient is easy.  The question is how to find the totient from n.  Well, the most obvious method would be to factor the number n, and use the factors, p and q, to find the toitent function (p-1)(q-1).  Now then, I believe an example is in order.  (Note: The number used here is not even close to the size of the actual numbers used.)

This is done as if we were TI, making the keys for the initial use.
Say we choose two prime numbers. p=13 and q=17.  We can easily see that (13-1)(17-1)=(12)(16)=192=t.  Now, using the Extended Euclidean algorithm, we use e=65537 and t to find d.  This makes d=65.  In case you don't want to read the Extended Euclidean algorithm (Specifically modular multiplicative inverse), let me explain how it works.  de-1=(65)(65537)-1=4259905-1=4259904.  4259904/192=22187, with the remainder being 0.  This is the d for the private key.  We are done finding the keys to use.

TI can either encrypt or sign their OS.  What signing means, is that a checksum of the data of the OS is taken, and encrypted using the private key.  (That is done one the computer)  The calc then does a checksum of the os, and uses it's public key to decrypt the checksum of the OS.  If the two checksums are equal, it is a valid os sent by TI.

Now then, this is our part:
The easiest way to send an OS or open the calc completely would be to, using the public key (which we already have) factor the number n.  Using the factors, we can easily find the private key.  The number 221 that I used earlier is only a byte.  That is 8 bits.  The number we are trying to factor for the Nspire is 1024 bits.  That is a lot bigger, so there are a few things that won't work:

• Naive algorithms like trial division. (Seriously, please don't suggest it)
• Any current algorithm.  Yep, no current algorithm is good enough to factor the key.  The current record is 768 bits, made by the top researchers with algorithms we don't even have access to.

Have I made it seem like all hope is lost?  Good! Now then, the reason I am creating this thread is not to discourage, but encourage.  I believe that if we all work on an algorithm together, that it is possible to actually factor the numbers.

(I just realized that I use the phrase "now then," a lot when trying to explain something.)

Any questions  (Wow, that was a long post with a lot of parenthesis.)