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You know, these things. I assume they run on some old computer language/framework, anyone know what that might be?
The displays themselves are pretty basic, they (in most cases) just have a microcontroller with some firmware that allows them to convert commands they get serially into patterns and/or characters. The more recent ones also give feedback regarding broken LEDs for example. Typically these firmwares are written either in assembly or C.
The real intelligence of these systems is often located in a central control system that coordinates an entire city or even a state. These control systems can perform intelligent tasks on entire groups of signs like given the location of an accident, they add the correct distance to the accident to the warning message, automatically divert traffic, and so on.
I know of such systems written in C, C++, Java, G2, ... Depends on the moment they were designed. So no, they're not by definition outdated and antique! They do tend to have a longer lifespan than your average desktop app though which often leads to the oldest parts being swapped out for more recent developments and these newer modules will in many cases be based on more recent technologies.
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I have a program that prompts for a PIN before performing particular actions. The PIN is stored, encrypted, in a local config file along side the executable binary. User enters PIN, program decrypts and compares to the stored value, if they are equal, ok, if not etc.
I'm aware this kind of security check could potentially be circumvented with forensic tools that alter the binary, in affect, changing the '==' to '!=' in the right place to make all the wrong PIN's pass the test in my example.
This may be a stupid question, as I know from the first 2 minutes of googling it's a big and challenging topic, but I still thought I should start with checking on features of the language/compiler I'm actually using first. So, are there any features natively available with Go to make this kind of attack harder to successfully perform?
No, there is nothing remotely like this in the official go compiler or standard library.
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I have finished watching the 2nd season of House of Cards, and I'm appalled. The show really is fantastic, however let me get down straight to the point - computer-wise, how realistic is the show? Gavin Orsay, a hacker and informant for the FBI created a USB stick for the The Washington Herald reporter Lucas Goodwin, which contained malicious code that would be automatically injected into any machine when plugged in.
- Theoretically, is this possible?
Not that I would want to do something like that, I'm just interested... And I'm not talking about autorun.infs, I mean real code that would be able to penetrate into a system, a virus, essentially. And if there was to be such a virus, would it be able to inject itself cross-platform? i.e. do the same amount of damage both on Windows, Unix, Linux distros etc.
This is possible. There have been certain countermeasures that have been implemented in Unix systems that pride themselves on being safe from attacks such as these.
That said, it wouldn't work on every machine.
This is not only possible it has been done many times. have a look at the Stuxnex virus developed by the United States to slow down Iran's uranium enrichment program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
As far as cross platform, the flash drive could have different versions of the same virus/trojan/worm compiled for different hardware and operating systems. Developing software like this is not a matter of "if" it can be done, it is a matter of how much time/money do you have to make it happen!
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Someone took my npm and released a new npm with my code under a different name. It looks like he only altered a few lines. His readme file has most of my words. It's also under a BSD license. Should I care and ask him to take it down, or leave it be?
According to the BSD license, redistribution like that is permitted only when proper source attribution is given. So releasing a patched npm under a different name is more or less fine (though rude if they didn't even contact you regarding why it needed altering), but if they simply removed your name and info and put in theirs then it is a license violation and you should contact them and/or report it.
The BSD license asks that the author merely be compensated with recognition of his work, and to violate that is...well, a big no no. In the academic world such a thing is plagiarism and is pretty well the civil equivalent of murder - ie, to be punished in the most severe way allowable.
Is it worth your time? Well, that's up to you. If they were just unaware of their improper behavior and are willing to fix it, fine, but if done intentionally/maliciously then "may the bird of paradise fly up their nose", and may all of their favorite webpages begin using the blink tag.
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Is there any way to find out the power consumed by an application. Like if i have some ten user apps running on my laptop and would like to know how much power each application is consuming in Linux environment?
The PowerTop tool might have something for you. Lookup the section "Power usage". If the tool itself is not what you want, you can research, where the tool retrieves its information and evaluate them in the way you want.
That's an interesting question and does not have a easy answer that I've heard of.
Presuming that you have a way of metering the minute to minute consumption of the machine. You can get a crude approximation by examining the amount of CPU time used. Either by watching things in top, or by examining the output of time (1). Compare the machine's total power consumption in various states of idleness and load to the amount of work done by each process---with enough statistics you should have a solvable system...possibly even a over-constrained one that calls for some kind of best-fit solution.
The only way that occurs to me to do it to high precision would be to use
Instrumented virtual machine that accumulated statistics on what parts of the CPU were activated. (Do such things exist at this time?!?)
The manufacturers documentation for the chip-n-board you are running on to total up the power implied.
which would be a horribly complicated mess.
Sorting out which bits were needed just to provide the environment and which could be unambiguously attributed to the program won't be easy.
I have to ask...why?
I don't know if there's really a "good way" to do this. But here's a suggestion for a generic approach that would work regardless of operating system: Remove the battery from your laptop, and hook up its power adapter to a high-precision current meter. Note the draw when no "normal" applications are running. Then run each application on its own and note the differences in current draw.
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I'm thinking about joining a free software project in order to increase my knowledge of how this kind of projects works, colaborating with people that I dont know (so far), and my C/C++ skills.
I`ve searched on sourceforge and so on, looking for projects that need developers... so my question is: how to join a existing project? (and find one I like)
Pick one you like/are interested in, look over its bug tracker, and contribute patches. As you demonstrate your ability to work along with the developers, you will generally be offered greater involvement (e.g. direct commit access).
#geekosaur has some good points. (+1)
If those don't work, I would consider looking for the lead developer of a project (preferably one with decent activity and leadership) and asking what areas they would like assistance in.
I promise you, almost every open source project manager would absolutely welcome a fresh face to the team!