06.20.07
Posted in Debian, Hacks, Linux/*BSD/Unix at 1:42 am by Nate Smith
What a cool little computer. The Linksys NSLU2 or as it is affectionately known, “The Slug”, is a little network computer that is meant to serve up USB disk devices on a network. It has been hacked. (yay smart people!) and you can now run Debian on it. Wow. The machine itself would have been nice to have a flash card expansion in it, but oh well. With a Thumb drive of two to four Gigabytes you can download a very functional installation of Debian Linux and run the device for a VPN, email, a phone system or a media server etc. Once you connect a USB hard drive it becomes a very capable machine provided you limit the tasks. It is capable of much more that it was with the original firmware. It is also possible to overclock (de-underclock) the machine by simply crushing, cutting or desoldering a resistor. The Slug is even better than Linux on the Linksys WRT54G because the slug is expandable and faster. Right now I am working on setting one up to relay the weather. I can already make telephone calls on it using Callweaver software. I have another one set up as a bacula file daemon with a hard drive and a USB tape drive attached. I need to learn my way around UDEV a little more to make this work like I would like. I’m using a USB hub for the Tape Drive and Hard drive and the devices get “misplaced” during a reboot.
Linksys gives hackers a lot of nice tools. Thanks Linksys! The Linksys Slug, check it out, very cool.
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Posted in miscellany, ramblings, rant at 1:25 am by Nate Smith
Here is the graph I wanted to show you. It is a little rough, but it demonstrates the concept. Across the bottom you can see the age in years. I stopped at 79 just for demonstration purposes. You can see the line on the graph make a noticeable curve about age 5, again in the late teen years, and it seems to again in the mid to late 30’s (It may appear to curve differently on a different scale).
I think people actually perceive these changes and that is why these ages are probably under discussion more than others. There are a lot of milestones in the late teens years 16-21 or even 25 all seem to have some built in milestones. This curve may somehow enhance our perceptions or the importance we place on these milestones?
Finally, I think this all goes back to the “sundae theory”
Perhaps it could also have something to do with why the early memories become hard to recall and few people have real memories from before the age of two.
At any rate, the graph should make it clear, that as we get older, a full day is a smaller and smaller fraction of our total life, of course I can’t actually prove our perception is affected by this. I will need to consider that further. Does this make time actually pass faster? No. There can only the perception that it passes faster. It could also be argued that since each month and each year are progressively smaller parts of our life that they would be perceived as passing faster too.
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06.19.07
Posted in Linux/*BSD/Unix, Windows/Microsoft at 8:05 am by Nate Smith
IT (Information Technology) can be fun because if you are a real workaholic, er, student of the craft, you can prototype things at home and then implement them at work. But, if you have multiple servers or machines you want to test with, it will very quickly get expensive to do this kind of thing using Microsoft Products. Certainly there is a way to reduce this cost if you are dedicated to Microsoft but for a lot of small business people and small system administrators MS makes this somewhat difficult. Enter Linux. (or *BSD etc). A free Operating system with tremendous flexibility you can throw on just about any kind of hardware (old or small) for testing, playing or prototyping.
So my choice, is licensing hassles for the OS and probably server products too or free software easily available over the Internet with few restrictions to do something in my spare time, I don’t have to do because I want to continue improving the situation at work? The choice is easy. I will pick free virtually every time and that means probably Linux.
Early on Microsoft saw the key to market share was applications and the key to having more applications was to give developers of all kinds the power and tools to enable them to write programs. This was very successful. In the free software world, development tools have always been free but there was a steeper learning curve attached to them. There is still a learning curve but in a lot of ways the tool sets are very comparable and thousands or hundreds of thousands of applications now exist in both camps.
So now, if you need to try a particular type of application or set up some kind of system, it is amazingly easy to set up a machine with a free operating system, and download the application you need from the Internet.
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06.17.07
Posted in Apple, Linux/*BSD/Unix at 12:43 pm by Nate Smith
I’m writing this post using the Safari for Windows Beta. So far so good. I’m not sure what Apple is accomplishing by issuing Safari for Windows, but you can bet there is a deep plan for it. Apple does not usually do things without plans within plans. One theory is the oft-rumored apple compatibility layer. It is likely that a packed layer exists within apply to bring all of the OS X functionality over the top of another operating system, doing for Windows what has been done with NetBSD. If it exists the fundamental portions are probably reasonably well tested between QuickTime and iTunes.
It is unlikely that the world needs another browser, between IE, Firefox and Opera and a few special purpose or “lesser” browsers it is hard to imagine a need for another browser. What trick is hiding up Apple’s sleeve? One way to answer this might be to consider how well the Safari Browser works with RIAs (Rich Internet Applications). How well does it work with applications using Ajax - such as GoogleApps, and how well does Safari work with flash-based applications? Keep in mind MS is also releasing an RIA platform.
By the way, Safari says it is for XP and Vista but it will work on Windows 2000, IE 7 will not work on Windows 2000 and of course Firefox will run on Windows 2000.
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06.15.07
Posted in miscellany, ramblings at 12:35 pm by Nate Smith
This is my theory, but I think others may share it. Perhaps somebody proposed it long ago.
When I was young it seemed like a Sunday afternoon would last ”F O R E V E R”. Now they seem to disapear in a blink of an eye. Waiting an hour seemed like an eternity, now the hours slip by unnoticed.
I believe that as we get older, each unit we use to measure time becomes and increasingly smaller fraction of our lives. When you are five years old an hour is still a measurable fraction - about 0.0005 of our life. At age 25 it’s 0.0001 of your life. At age 35 the fraction is much smaller (7.8226093 × 10-5). It works the same if you calculate it in weeks or years but the numbers are more impressive when you use hours.
So that’s my theory on why time seems to pass faster as we get older.
Look at it this way - when you are two - a year ago is one half of your life. Each day is also a greater fraction of your life. Say .001 if you are two years old. When you are 30 (Thirty) you have lived 10950 days, so each day is like 9.1324200913242009132420091324201 e-5 fraction of your life. A much smaller fraction of your total life as you grow older. More to come, including some diagrams, if I can find the time.
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Posted in paranoia, ramblings, rant at 12:06 pm by Nate Smith
Security is a challenge everywhere, so why do we leave our security to the “security-challenged”? During a recent trip I got to see the TSA [http://www.tsa.gov/] in action in two airports. The difference bewteen the airports was night and day. The local airport looked like a mash-up of the Three Stooges and the Honeymooners. Staff were yelling at each other very unprofessionally and carrying on. The perception was that this group of misfits could barely hold a job and the ultimate goal of their job was probably the last thing on their mind. It was more important to push suitcases through the machines than to consider for a minute the reason behind it. I believe you could have given everyone there double or even ten times the wages and the result would have been no different. These were clearly the wrong people to put in charge of “security”. If there was any compentence working behind the scenes, they it was spread far too thin to make a difference.
It would make sense to me to split the TSA folks into two groups, a security agent or ombudsman to guide people through the process, and security technicians that actually concern themselves with the task at hand. Hopefully the technicians are people who care and understand the intent of their job. Too many TSA employees had to concern themselves with yelling reminders and herding people through the process.
I think there are too many fundamental flaws with the whole system though. Air-travel needs to be re-imagined and redone. Smaller planes for niche markets. Bring back the Zeppelin for long distance trips. These ageing, flying city-buses with porta potties and forever shrinking seats are insane. This is the same air travel of 20 years ago. We should be able to do better.
There was a time when not everyone believed they were entitled or could even afford to fly. Instead of improving flight, it seems the airlines lowered their costs and standards to bring flying to the masses. We cannot expect additional goverment involvement to fix the problems either. Clearly, the government cannot pay people to care.
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Posted in paranoia, ramblings, rant at 11:46 am by Nate Smith
I recently went on a vacation that included a plane trip. Frankly, I don’t understand how so many people can get on a plane and not be bothered about compromising their rights for what we perceive to be greater security. I would go so far to say that it *seems* like we expect security to require inconvenience so that by being inconvenienced - or violated - we expect security in exchange.
In computers we see this all the time. Longer passwords, RSA key fobs, long security codes in hexidecimal. These things are a hinderance and if applied propertly, can be used to enhance security. But people are always in the mix, and as long as somebody writes their password down, or holds the door open for a stranger, or answers carefully crafted questions over the phone, there is a weak link.
The point I am getting to is this: It is unrealistic to expect anyone, especially the government, to provide security for everyone, because everyone includes all the “weak links”. “Everyone” also includes airlines and airports.
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