TECHNICIAN
Pack Poll results are in Students weigh in on wealth distribution, the NSA and more 5th 1/5 8%
Staff Writer
75%
4th 1/5 14%
53%
3rd 1/5 22%
56% 60%
4th 1/5 5th 1/5 3rd 1/5 2% 1% 9%
19% 2nd 1/5 21%
2014
38% Top 1/5 67%
26% 31%
3rd 1/5 4th 1/5 0% 5th 1/5 4% 2nd 1/5 0% 11%
BUG continued page 2
Top 1/5 85%
6% 9% 18% 9%
Key: Democrats Republicans Independents All Students
OIT avoids Heartbleed emergency, risk remains Staff Writer
USA
insidetechnician
2nd 1/5 24%
22
Sasha Afanasyeva
Norway
POLL continued page 2
Top 1/5 32%
Ideal wealth distribution, according to NCSU students
Equal
The Spring-semester Pack Poll indicated that most N.C. State students would prefer an equal distribution of wealth in the United States, about half disapprove of the government spying on civilians and 40 percent prefer eastern-style instead of western-style barbeque among other things. Associate Professor of public and international affairs, Michael Cobb, and a number of his students conducted the poll that surveyed more than a thousand N.C. State undergraduate students, a representative sample, about their views concerning climate change, foreign policy and the National Security Agency’s data-collection practices. The featured survey on the Pack Poll website concerned wealth distribution in the U.S. Respondents were shown a number of pie charts that represented the wealth distribution of the U.S., Norway and one that signified an almost equal distribution of wealth and were asked to choose which one represented the U.S. and which distribution would result in the most successful nation. Almost 45 percent of the students correctly identified the chart that represented the U.S., but only 9 percent agreed that was the wealth distribution needed to be successful, according to the Pack Poll website. Every semester, Cobb works with a group of his students to create a number of public opinion surveys that poll the opinions of other students regarding current issues. The polls have generated some fascinating findings, according to Cobb. “Something interesting that we have noticed in the past few years is that students are incredibly liberal on social issues but call themselves conservative on average,” Cobb said. “For one survey, we asked students to place themselves ideologically on social issues versus economic issues. The majority said that they
april
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
Mona Bazzaz
tuesday
SOURCE: PACKPOLL.COM GRAPHIC BY AUSTIN BRYAN
Heartbleed, one of the biggest internet-security breaches to date, affected N.C. State servers and computers, sending campus IT scrambling to patch the vulnerability overnight. The security breach was discovered April 7 at N.C. State and was patched on April 8. However, some information may have been stolen before the breach was patched. Named after a “heartbeat,” or a virtual “handshake” between a computer and a server, Heartbleed affected OpenSSL, a security protocol that verifies the identity of a user and a server, according to Stan North Martin, director of Outreach, Communications & Consulting at N.C. State. “Basically, it’s a bug in code that was used to encrypt our information that gets passed between file servers and your computer on the internet,” Martin said. “The interesting thing is that while it’s used for encryption, the actual bug itself had nothing to do with the encryption part of the protocol or the service that does the encrypting.” The bug affected hundreds of services, such as Yahoo, Facebook, Instagram and many other major companies and social networks. “The bug itself was a way of sending a request for a piece of information without giving you full verification of what you wanted, and you ended up getting more information than you requested,” Martin said. Although that may seem harmless at first, the bug allowed people to obtain password information of other users, Martin said. “Once it was patched, people could not use the bug to get any information, but there was still a
BUG continued page 2
Students build animatronic wolf to display at Hunt Ravi Chittilla Assistant News Editor
FEATURES Hops by Hopper: Gizmo tinkers with brews See page 5.
SPORTS State pulls upset of No. 25 Demon Deacons See page 7.
SPORTS Harrell wins Wolfpack Open See page 8.
Visitors to the Hunt Library will notice there’s a new wolf at N.C. State beginning Friday, but this one might look a little different than Mr. or Mrs. Wuf. The Timber-Wolf, the finished product of Michelle Phillips and Kevin Young, both seniors in mechanical engineering, will be housed in the Hunt Library Technology Showcase room. It stands at about two-and-ahalf-feet tall and is about four feet from nose to tail, Young said. Constructed from treated wood, the Timber-Wolf will be able to raise its head, open its jaw in a howling motion and raise its ears. “However, since the TimberWolf will be in a library, the howling will have to be silent,” Young said. Phillips and Young completed the wolf as part of their capstone project as members of the University Honors Program. Ph i l l ips sa id t he projec t stemmed from her interest in amusement parks, and after working at Universal Studios last summer, she was inspired to display the marriage between engineering and amusement parks for students to appreciate. “Last summer I interned with Universal Studios, where I was
ELIZABETH DAVIS/TECHNICIAN
Kevin Young and Michelle Phillips, both seniors in mechanical engineering, display their senior-design project, The Timber-Wolf. The Timber-Wolf is an animatronic structure, which will be displayed in the Hunt Library.
working on the new Harry Potter expansion, but I didn’t really get to design,” Phillips said. “So the idea was to create a student project and bring the amusement industry to N.C. State. The natural choice was a wolf. Kevin is really interested in control-systems-and-dynamics research. This project really brought together both of our interests.” Phillips and Young said they began with a four-inch children’s toy
as a model of the wolf and used 3-D scanning software to scale the model to its actual size. “A big part of our project was possible because of Hunt Library’s Maker Space, where we were able to conduct the 3-D scanning process,” Phillips said. The mechanics of the Wolf is similar to a piston in a car attached to a motor, and all of those motors are controlled by a tiny processor, Phil-
lips said. Phillips said because Hunt Library emphasizes human-technology interaction, she hopes the installation of the Timber-Wolf will not only inspire mechanical engineers but reach out to students of all majors. The unveiling ceremony for the Timber-Wolf is Friday from 10 to 11 a.m. in the Technology Showcase at Hunt Library.