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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxSUBMIT YOUR IDEA Ever wonder what the inside of a power supply looks like?
Don’t take a chance on destroying your own rig; instead, let us do the dirty
work. Tell us what we should crack open for a future autopsy by writing to
[email protected].used for this study were then placed in waiting
rooms throughout New York City. (Don’t worry,
Maximum PC was not part of this study.)
The RFID has an internal clock that can
measure how long each of the key pages,
and the magazine as a whole, remains open.
As the patch comes into contact with the
sensor (when the page is turned or the entire
magazine is closed), the RFID records that
page number and the total time it was open.
An RFID reader inside the waiting room will
later establish a wireless connection with
the RFID tag, retrieve the information stored
within it, and transfer it to a PC.
I SPY
If the prospect of someone monitoring how
much time you spend reading a magazine
creeps you out, imagine having an RFID
transponder embedded in your body. The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved
such an application—the Applied Digital
Solutions’s VeriChip—in 2004. The VeriChip
contains a 16-digit number that correlates to
information stored in a central database and
is used to identify an individual.
But with its vast capacity, an RFID device
inside you could store not just your name and
address, but everything from your marital
status to your ethnicity, height and weight,
hair and eye color, blood type, and health
status—even what model car you drive.
Google rakes in billions of dollars in
revenue by displaying ads targeted to your
search queries. Imagine how much advertis-
ers would pay for ads that could be aimed
specifi cally at you—á la Minority Report—
taking all of your personal information into
account to craft the ultimate custom message.
Take the sci-fi element out of the equa-
tion and there’s still reason to worry about
RFID technology endangering privacy
rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) is spearheading several anti-RFID
initiatives, including one to prevent school
districts from tracking students using RFID.
“We’re not against RFID as a whole,”
says EFF senior staff attorney Lee Tien. “I
have RFID-controlled car locks, and it’s
great. We’re concerned that RFID technol-
ogy is promiscuous and persistent. Tags can
contain personal information such as credit
card numbers and addresses, often unen-
crypted, which can be read by any compat-
ible reader. There’s no challenge-response
authentication. It’s not necessarily govern-
ment or big business—it’s the fact that you’ll
be exposed to this level of scrutiny.”
Such eff orts are unlikely to stop the prolif-
eration of RFID, but they will help raise public
awareness—and that should prevent the most
egregious abuses of the technology.
AUTOPSYX-plorer Guitar
We didn’t bash it against a stage, but we are disassembling the standard
controller for Aspyr’s Guitar Hero 3 PC game to see how plastic parts
translate to onscreen shreddinghttp://www.maximumpc.com | JUN 08 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| 67
SUBMIT YOUR IDEA Ever wonder what the inside of a power supply looks like?
Don’t take a chance on destroying your own rig; instead, let us do the dirty
work. Tell us what we should crack open for a future autopsy by writing to
[email protected].We didn’t bash it against a stage, but we are disassembling the standard
controller for Aspyr’s Guitar Hero 3 PC game to see how plastic parts
translate to onscreen shreddingcontroller for Aspyr’s Guitar Hero 3 PC game to see how plastic parts
MAINBOARD
This circuit board is the hub
for the guitar’s connection
options. It processes the
instructions from the but-
tons and directional pad on
the front of the guitar. The
board is also home to the
guitar’s accelerometer—a
chip that measures the
guitar’s acceleration along
three axes in order to
trigger your rock-out star
power bonus in the game.RJ-11 JACK
In a perfect world, you’d use this RJ+11 connector—a
phone-cord jack—to attach effects pedals to the guitar.
Red Octane, though, has yet to release, let alone an-
nounce, any hardware expansions for its guitars.WHAMMY BAR
The guitar’s one-
way whammy bar
uses a spring to
create tension
when you slam
down the handle.
The motion is
transferred
through an axle to
the potentiometer,
which converts
mechanical
movement of the
whammy bar into
an electrical
signal that the
controller
passes on to
your game.FRETS
Pressing the plastic button of one of the guitar’s fi ve col-
ored frets simultaneously pushes in a rubber molding.
Two dots on the underside of the molding hit two actua-
tors on a circuit board, which registers the toggled fret.STRUMMER
Pushing the guitar’s strummer
raises one of the plastic edges on the
underside of the mechanism. This, in
turn, hits one of two switches, which
registers as a played note in the
game. A small strip of folded metal is
responsible for the irritating clicking
noise that accompanies every strum.