204 DEAR HACKER

204 DEAR HACKER

employee didn’t ask us what happened. He just simply canceled the order and printed a receipt. Apparently the machine didn’t even re- cord that I put money into it. Or, if it did, he deleted it. Regardless, all he did to do this was touch the corner of the screen, type 27, then type 240. I’m assuming one of the numbers is a store number and the other is his employee ID. The menu was very simple; a monkey could navigate through it. With a bit of a distraction it seems like you could start printing your own receipts! This is stealing and illegal, so don’t! But it’s always fun to play with Meijer employees.

chemdream

2007

Dear 2600: My neighbor’s burglar alarm went off this morning and after it kept

going for a while I walked around their house to see if anybody was going to do something about it. Apparently my neighbors weren’t home because there was no sign of life, but they had several “Protected by Brinks” signs on the lawn. So I called Brinks to see what they had to say. After navigating their automated phone system to get to an opera- tor I was asked to enter the phone number of the location where the alarm is installed. Since I didn’t know my neighbor’s phone number I had to enter “#” several times to get through to a person. I explained to the Brinks representative that my neighbor’s alarm was going off. When they asked me for my neighbor’s phone number I explained that

I didn’t know it but I gave them my neighbor’s address. After checking their records they happily informed me, “Oh, that address isn’t moni- tored.” Nice! What if I had been a burglar casing the neighborhood to find unmonitored alarm systems? It wouldn’t take a genius to social engineer these idiots who are all too eager to tell you which addresses are monitored and which aren’t.

Arcade One

I am writing about possibly getting an article posted. I believe that this would make a worthy article for its controversial nature and its unend- ing curiosity. I have always found the idea of time travel plausible. It has always been on the back burner in my mind trying to figure out how and why. So I am asking that you give a moment of your time to read a story/theory about time travel. I think it would be worthy of readers’ time as well. After the publishing of H.G. Wells’ book The Time Machine, science has embraced a new study. Throughout time they have become more and more aware that this might not be so far- fetched. Scientists are believing that they are getting closer to unlock- ing the mystery and making it possible to indeed time travel. Many theories have been presented over the years and I would like to share mine with you now. First off, I would like to eliminate the idea of us- ing a DeLorean car (as in Back to the Future) to time travel. I would also like to eliminate the idea of a time machine that can travel both forward and backward in time. I state that because time is a constant. It is always moving forward. Chronological events in history easily verify this. Now that I have cleared up those little misconceptions, I would like to move on to the bigger picture. To make time travel pos- sible we are going to need a vessel that can carry us. This would look no different than your average space shuttle with minor alterations. For example, the engines may be different and the gas chambers larger to hold the amount of fuel that is going to be needed to make this a reality. Now with our shuttle built, we need to discuss how it is going to be used. Assuming that the shuttle was built to execute our plan, we are going to need to travel away from the Earth at a speed faster than the Earth is traveling. Time on Earth is only relative to the speed the Earth is traveling. We manage our time due to the spinning. By traveling this speed (assuming that there is enough fuel to propel us that fast and for the amount of time), we are able to create a difference in our time and Earth’s time. Time now having a different factor for us, we can imagine that the Earth is aging more than we are at a faster rate. It is as if we are slowing down time due to our speed. Without precise calculations we are not able to determine the amount of time we would be exceeding during our travel in space. Upon returning to