Centauri's Thoughts

We started eons ago as separate beings with separate thoughts, completely isolated.

Through the advent of language, we got better at communicating with each other, but this was still a long ways from truly understanding anothers thoughts. We are a sea of of islands, each completely distinct in thoughts.

As time went on, we got better at communicating with each other. Not only in spoken word, but with the written word as well. Writing also allowed people to speak across time, for once something was written, it could be read at any time, whether that was ten minutes later, or ten years, or ten centuries!

In the past ten years, our level of communications has gone up yet another level. Our written word is not just a daily newspaper or a letter. We went from e-mail, to web pages, to blogs, to chat, twitter and IM.

Communication now is almost instantaneous amongst so many of us, and the connectedness of us is starting to resemble the kind of connection in a large brain. Each of us has many contacts, and each of those contacts has many more, and not all of them overlap. the concept of a “meme” spreading over the global community is somewhat like a “thought” becoming known to the whole.

The concept of the Borg in StarTrek: The Next Generation was a bunch of beings tied together at the thought level. We are working our way towards this, although we have a long ways to go. for one thing, we dont (as of yet) have a chip implant to be always connected to the centralized system (thats coming!). There is also the question of being able to turn it off (the Borg didnt have this choice).

The way we can currently get legions of computers to work together on a problem (via the SETI distributed method, or parallel processors) could prove very interesting when this is applied to human minds. Imagine if solving a problem suitable for human could be sent to 100 or a 1,000 minds to each ponder and resolve all or a part of it, together.

IF we dont blow ourselves up, I feel this last point will not be a question of if – but when

You know its really an abuse of all of our time and effort when we have to develop a system like CAPTCHA.

The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University. At the time, they developed the first CAPTCHA to be used by Yahoo. reference

Spammers have no ethics, morals or respect of other peoples time. They are lazy and greedy, and want the world to provide them a free ride.

We have to spend a lot of time making sure our own software cant be abused by them. e-mail, blogs, forums, comments. anywhere that data can be entered is potentially at risk.

I know I shut down my OWN forums and blogs a few times because of spam.

I have CAPTCHAs now, but this war is far from over.

Its frustrating to wake up one day, find your PC locked up, only to discover that something is seriously wrong and it wont boot up.

After searching for a way to recover the system (in vain), I took the hit and re-installed linux and re-compiled my apps. One and a half days later I am back with almost ALL the functionality I had before.

This is actually faster than I remember considering the number of apps that were NOT in the install distro.

*sigh*

This can definitely take the load and scheduling problems off the Deep Space Network:

The Internet has entered the final frontier.

NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet, using it to transmit images to and from a spacecraft 20 million miles from Earth, it was announced on Tuesday.

"This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet," said Adrian Hooke, leader of the team that performed the feat and manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NASA and Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google, in Mountain View, Calif., who is often called the father of the Internet, partnered 10 years ago to develop the software protocol used for space transmissions, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN. The DTN sends information using a method that differs from the terrestrial Internet's Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communication suite, which Cerf co-designed.

The Interplanetary Internet must be robust enough to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space. Glitches can happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms and long communication delays occur. For instance, the delay in sending or receiving data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half to 20 minutes, even at the speed of light.

If a disruption occurs in the pathway along which the information travels, each node in the network will hang on to its information until it's safe to communicate, unlike our Internet on Earth, which just discards the data packets.

Reference: deep-space-internet

Inevitably, you start running out of disk space and need more. These days, when you are working your older 40 Gig hard drives, you have 2 choices. Take out the old drive, and put in a completely new one, and reload everything
-or-

put the new one in as a secondary drive.


We were looking at drives today (and prices). The first thing we noticed was the smallest drive you can get is 80 Gig. The next thing we noticed was the cost for a 120 gig HD is close to the price of an 80.


Drives for the average PC consumer on the upper end of things is now 300 gig for only $229.00 - compare this to getting and 80 gig for $99.00


One drive we looked at was a 250 gig drive, which after rebates was pretty darned reasonable.. UNDER $80. OK let me give you that number another way: 250 Gigabyes = one quarter TeraByte!


If we were doing some real-time editing of DVD quality movies.. I could see having this much disk space. On Unix, when we are not running HUGE Database servers, this kind of space is Obscene, and very nearly a crime!


Our operating system with all the installed apps we have is barely 3 Gig. Winderz in comparison puts a good 3 Gig into the "Program files" for an equivelent system with HTML editors and graphics installed, and this does not include the server parts.
I am truly amazed at the size of drives these days!, people have enough issues with not backing up. This just gets them into deeper trouble!


I have no idea what we will do in this house with a TeraByte of disk space, but I see exactly that within another year.. we typically have 4 or 5 machines ready to go here. We already have 40+40+80+40+120 soon. Thats 320 Gig. almost a 1/3 Tera. LOL - over 4 machines, and you can get a 300 Gig drive now.. with 4 IDE controllers.. you could put 4x300 in a single PC.. that 1.2 Tera right there!

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. is rolling out a new security system aimed at thwarting efforts by online crooks to access its customers' accounts.


Passwords will no longer be enough.


With SiteKey, bank customers pick three challenge questions -- things only the customer would know, such as the year and model of the customer's first car -- and provide them with the traditional password to log on.


Customers can also verify they are indeed at Bank of America's Web site by clicking on a SiteKey button. If they fail to see a secret image and phrase they had chosen earlier, they could be at a fake Web site and the target of a "phishing" scam.


Until we have full biometrics this will be better security than just a password. I can see people forgetting which challenge questions go with which site though, ultimately causing more headaches if they get locked out after the 3rd or 5th try, because they pick the right challenge question.


The full story is here

I've been reading a lot recently concerning all kinds of wireless protocols and devices which can and would use them. From the Bluetooth network for small groups of rather simple devices made to chat together on "piconets" to the stadard full Ethernet protocol of 802.11a,b and g to the new 100 Mbit 802.11n


Each has strengths and weaknesses, depending upon its application and use. What I really see coming out of all this is everything in the house even remotely electrical or electronic, being able to communicate. I see the following advantages to such things: centrally controlled devices that can be programmed for turning off or on. Devices that can report back if they have a problem, devices that can tell other devices to tun on or off. In a way, I some of this as a kind of household wide X-10 type of technology that does not require the wires. Potentially, you could have motion sensors that turn lights on and off as you pass down a hall or move from room to room. (Sometimes this does not work at all as smoothly as intended, and at times can cause a comedy of errors, which I'll get into later on my X-10 experience).


Intel is working on a single chip which has the potential to talk a few of these protcols, to ensure it gets a connection. Also, there are now a variety of SBCs (Single Board Computers) that are barely bigger than a DDR memory stick. Imagine being able to remotely program dinner to cook, or the house pick itself up before you get home. (Parts of this are already starting to happen, although Rosy isnt running the Jetsons Vacuum Cleaner, because Rosy *IS* the Vacuum cleaner! AKA Roomba)


While its true that we can pre-program the microwave and even program it for many levels of cooking and periods of sitting, you cant exactly put food in it before work and leave it there all day. There are more and more sofisticated house temp controls that will set the house for different setting for mon-fri and entirely different settings for the weekends. What I have NOT seen yet, is a simple temp and ruleset for "someone *IS* home, and someone *IS NOT* home", and that setting determined by the rest of the house, by IR sensors or movement in the house, but that wont be long in coming.


The problem with automation, is the very strength inherent in it. To "do" something automatically. As an example, I had gotten some X-10 devices to play with, and one of these devices is a motion sensor run on 2 AA batteries so it can be put just about anywhere and talk to a nearby RF receiver (a TREMENDOUS advance over 100% hard wiring). The idea was this: put a motion sensor in a room that we did not frequent that much, so that motion would kick a light on as we passed into that area, and shut off a minute later. Since we spent MOST of the time on the computers in the back room, and had a TV back there, and only came to the front to get something from the kitchen, this *usually* worked pretty well. The problem, however, was when we wanted to watch DVD's or tapes out front where all the main equipment was. We'd walk in, the lights would come on, we'd get set for watching TV, and the lights would go out after we'd been sitting still for a little while. To make things more interesting, if we had been sitting for a while, and someone stretched or walked into the kitchen, the lights would pop on. Clearly, what was needed here was an override to the normal function in automation. So far, X-10 doesnt work this way, (not directly) but X-10 can be configured to turn a Macro on and off and that macro can have rules about what to turn on and off. So building of the rulesets can happen, its just not all there yet.

I knew some time back that Mac OS-X was the same operating system as mine (Free-BSD) and because of that, I knew that the Mac GUI could be put on almost any hardware, since it is now removed from the OS a bit.


I also know that they had made some changes and tweaked the version Mac was using over the standard FreeBSD tree, but the changes wouldnt be too drastic.


Looks like they are going to be on very similar hardware now that they will be using Intel chips.


A full article from John Dvorak here

Spent part of the afternoon reading and learning about the bluetooth protocol. I had been hearing about it (mostly in connections with cell phones), but I wanted to learn more.


One thing I found out, is Bluetooth is a kind of RF Ethernet protocol, and is designed for many devices to auto discover each other and set up "piconets" within a related device group, even as there may be other "piconets" within the same space. the concepts are interesting, but I'd like to see what would happen when every modern appliance I own all had bluetooth technology.


I would like to play with it on my unix machine, but that means I need at LEAST 2 bluetooth devices, the interface for my PC, and some other device (I dont own a cell phone). It sounds like I can use it to make services available from my unix machine (like a type of web browsing, or other informational things).


I might also use something like that for robot communications in the house. We'll see how this develops over time.


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Today we loaded BOTH ancient machines up with their fill of the older games we have (That IS one of the primary purposes of said old machines).


Quake II, Quake III, F-22 Raptor & Half-Life are some of those we use these machines for, mostly because we can play each other or the games are just decent on their own.


I dont have the inclination nor the time to keep up with games anymore, but I do enjoy the few we have.


What else does one do with an 80 Gig hard drive that no longer contains all the things that we usually carry around, like collections of e-mail, graphics, mp3, mpegs, etc. Thats all on our Primary unix machines now.