the.Inevitable.Org/anism

Predicting Earthquakes … becoming a reality!
I used to go to SVRA (State Vehicular Recreational Area) in California - near the town of Hollister - to ride my dirt bike. Once while were down there there was a good sized earthquake, and we were less than a mile from the epicenter. It was an amazing experience. I remember that I had walked over to a spigot on the campground to wash some breakfast dishes, and all of the sudden I lost my balance and fell over. And looking up, I saw campers swaying and watched my bike fall off it’s stand. As soon as I stood up, the shaking stopped … and the ground that had felt like standing on a water bed became solid again.

The thought of the ability to predict these quakes will be extremely valuable to communities around the world. And knowing people these days, it might prove to be a whole new “real world” experience! I can just imagine the news: “Scientists predict large quake … thrill seekers flock to location.“

Predicting the Next Big One. Scientists at UCLA have successfully predicted the magnitude of recent earthquakes around the world within a time frame of mere months. What’s next? A quake in the Mojave Desert, and it looks like it’ll be a big one. By Amit Asaravala. [Wired News]

Earth Browser …
Again I have to thank Adam for pointing out this great application … it is a great example of the aggregation of, and presentation of, a wide range of planetary sensors.

earth browser. Last week on my way to florida I met a 747 captain who was very enthousiastic about showing me all the cool stuff he had on his Mac. With ease he showed me qucktime DV movies of him flying a gypsy moth (with wooden airframe) only feet above the surface of the English Channel and other neat multimedia stuff. I noticed an icon titled ‘Earth Browser‘ on his desktop, he couldn’t show me the whole application since it rerally needs a net connection to function properly, but I downloaded it this morning and was amazed at botht he program and the business model.

Earth Browser is a graphic rich application that aggregates all kinds of freely available weather related data and presents it as an interactive world map that can be customized to who weather, webcams, forecasts and almost anything a pilot wants for a general weather briefing. $29.95 removes some limitations and let’s you zoom into 2 kilometers depth.

Sure I can get the same information free from online sources, but I’m happy to pay for the packaging the developers of the software did. Great job guys! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

Another amazing Internet icon … and what the Internet future holds
I had the opportunity to hear Vint Cerf speak at a Java conference almost a decade ago. He was an awesome person to listen too. He has an incredible perspective of the ‘Net. It was really impressive to hear him talk about the early days of the Internet and what they were thinking. He also talked about taking the Internet into the solar system, and defining the IPv6 addressing. He talked about inter-planet routing … how Internet traffic will be routed off the planet to Mars, for example.

I came across the article below and want to thank Adam for pointing it out. The quote below is an example of the depth of thought that occurs within Vint, and I can truly identify with his thoughts. I am not sure that I agree that society requires “fixing”, however I do believe that people could choose a different way to be.

Along with the things that Vint talks about, I have to admit that I never believed I would be so close to one of the largest acts of cyber-terrorism that we might witness so far in Internet history. The MyDoom virus is looking like one of the largest attacks of this type ever seen. Working at SCO provides an interesting viewpoint on how people are treated when they follow the defined judicial process, within a democratic society, in pursuing their rights and asking for their day in court. Hopefully the writers of this virus are caught and prosecuted. It would be great to see someone from the “Open Source Community” turn them in …

I hope that as world governments and global businesses evaluate their options in choosing who will control their destiny, they fully understand that they are dealing with a very amorphous entity that is able to strike outside the boundaries defined by laws, and that can choose to defy the structures that we have put in place for “modern” society to exist. No matter what people think about other peoples actions or behaviors … there is no excuse for terroristic attacks, of any kind, towards anyone. Period.

I believe that we are witnessing an aspect of one segment of society. If they are choosing to attack like this now … over this issue … then who is next on the list? First Microsoft, then SCO, then who? What will they do to a government that might find in favor of SCO? Or a company that does business with SCO? And what will be the collateral damage?

Vint Cerf: “The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see,” he said. “If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society.” [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

SVG continues to make progress
Working with the WebFace team has taught me a lot about Web Browser technologies. One that we have been tracking for a while is Scalable Vector Graphics - or SVG. This is now beginning to gain momentum, and I am impressed at this article that shows what is possible using this solution. In addition, it references information at the end about using SVG with mobile devices, and even how voice interfaces might emerge.

I agree with Rachel Reese that Adnan Masood’s Interactive Mapping Using SVG & ASP.NET is among the coolest articles I’ve seen done about ASP.NET.

[Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Weblog]

Is there another valid perspective?
It’s interesting to see all of the press and comments about the SCO lawsuit. This was a posting to Slashdot that was in interesting contrast.

The writer of this post actually asked the question .. or opened an exploration into a broader question: “Is there maybe something that SCO is doing, that although we are completely against it, might have some level of validity?”

I have to say that there is considerable outrage and upset in the Open Source community. The last time that I checked, SCO was pursuing the legal steps that are defined within our society to resolve these types of issues. It appears to me that there are now two issues to be resolved:

• a) What exactly *did* Novell sell to SCO for 6.1 million shares of SCO stock?

• b) Is the UNIX license between IBM and SCO a valid license, and is IBM in full compliance with the terms?

Outside of all of the “religious” wars … these are the two real issues. If SCO does own the license agreements, and IBM is in violation … then it seems that everyone else missed something *very* big.

SCO - What have WE Forgotten? [Slashdot]

The return of WebPhone
When I first started to really use the Internet, I was involved with a group of friends in lookin at what was possible. We played with a lot of software - including WebPhone and CUSeeMe.

WebPhone was an application that looked like a little phone on your desktop, and it allowed you to use Voice over IP (VoIP) to talk with other WebPhone users over the Internet. The other day I found a list, that I was keeping, of all of the places around the world that I spoke to using WebPhone. I remember one day when we talked to a professor and his class at Kent University. They joked about us having Internet in Utah, and we joked back that we just heard they had a shooting on the campus.

CUSeeMe was a Video Conferencing package that we used at the same time. It was really impressive to set-up a “reflector” on one of our servers, and then to connect to the server using the CUSeeMe client. You were able to see who was connected in a list, open a video display of one or more of the participants, and then type back and forth. Audio was possible, however not well implemented.

What was interesting is that we were doing this with 14.4kbps modems, and then 56kbps modems. It seemed that as the bandwidth increased, the use of these applications dropped off. I just spent some time to go and find some of the “remains” of CUSeeMe … I’m going to see if I can get a reflector going again.

In the mean time … it was interesting to read about this new application catching attention … a decade later! Skype is almost exactly what WebPhone was …

OK, Skype has 240,000 downloads in just half a month. It took ICQ 60 days to get that many back in 1996. What’s different? Well, for one it was an established company that released Skype. ICQ was released to 40 users and no one knew anything about ICQ. But, remember, back in 1996 no one had weblogs. In fact, I had one of the first five public pages up about ICQ, while Skype has been talked about everywhere.

Anyway, Skype is now my new bar of release excellence for a small-company software product.

Hey, during that Sun keynote this morning the IP telephone from Vodaphone failed on stage. They shoulda used Skype. Hasn’t failed for me yet and the audio quality is unbelieveable.

People are asking me “you were the NetMeeting bigot, why you so excited about software that just does audio?” (NetMeeting was Microsoft’s audio/video/collaboration product that was released in 1995). For one, it works. For two, its user interface is clean and uncluttered. Don Norman would love it. For three, it makes you feel good using it, and makes you want to use it with your friends and family. (Translation: the audio quality rocks and is better than NetMeeting, or even MSN Messenger 6.0).

[Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Weblog]

Grid grows … because it is becoming possible!
Grid Computing, Utility Computing, Distributed Computing … they are all buzz words evolving through the last decade or more. Why is everyone talking about them so much?

One of the core reasons is because it is becoming possible to build and manage in a simple way. At SCO we have been looking at Grid and Utility computing, and have some ideas on how this will evolve and emerge. Some of the foundation technologies have been coming together, and I believe we are going to see this accelerate.

First is the computing power and bandwidth. Computers and the Internet have evolved to the point where the overhead of distributed computing is something that is completely manageable and acceptable.

Second is the networking protocols and standards - like SOAP - that have emerged as the standard way to have application components communicate across the network. These standards provide the “least common denominator” langauge for interoperability between components written in different langauges on different operating system platforms. Software can call functions in other software … even if it exists on an entirely different machine.

Third is the virtualization that I talked about in my last post. As more software components are written in languages that can be executed on a diverse set of hardware/software platforms, it provides more places for these components to “live” … hence distributed computing.

I agree completely with these forecasts, and believe that we are going to watch the continuing acceleration of distributed applications … and I’m going to continue to work in this area.

Survey: Interest in grid computing grows. Corporate IT decision-makers are showing more interest in grid computing at their companies, with 20% saying they could adopt it within two years. [Computerworld News]

Virtualization … above the OS
For over six months now, I have been looking into the evolution of software technologies, and where we are heading beyond the Operating System. For a proper abstraction of an operating system to be created, there are two core solutions required. The first of these is what I call “encapsulators”. An encapsultor is a software component that wraps some sort of logic or programming and exposes it through a standard interface. At SCO we are developing a series of encapsulators that wrap up OS functionality, terminal sessions, and SQL databases and expose them as SOAP web services.

The second, almost more important solution, is what I call “virtualizers” … Virtual Machines … or “dynamic language” support. The article below touches on this subject, as it explains how much of the development of new software has moved from being written in C or C++ - and tightly coupled to the OS platform it was written for - to newer languages that have greater portibility.

As more people move to developing in languages like Java, C#, PHP, Perl, Python, etc. their resulting applications can migrate between operating systems much easier. There is a flip-side of this flexibility however, and that is the commoditization and marginalization of operating systems themselves. We are moving into a new phase of computing … where the hardware computing platforms that we are using are able to execute so quickly, that software layers of virtualization produce completely acceptable performance levels. This means that more development will occur in these languages, and more applications - and application components - will be developed in a form that is cross-operating system ready.

The value of the operating system of the future, in my opinion, is going to be judged by the encapsulations of its functionality, and its support for virtualized execution environments.

App dev rides the virtual machine. Today’s enterprise developers have many choices when it comes to virtual machines that handle the plumbing and let them focus on user features. [Computerworld News]

Access Points with intelligence!
I am very impressed with this project, and like to see technology like this hitting the commodity mainstream. Linksys has implemented an Access Point with a mini-Linux running inside. These guys have now started to create distributions of additional tools, etc. that can run inside the AP.

What I really like about this is the possiblity of putting additional authentication code inside of the AP for controlling access through it. I am currently involved in a project where we require a PC dedicated to provide this type of functionality. The PC siots between the Internet and the Access Point and provides the authentication and access control. If we could embed our code inside of this AP, we could eliminate the cost of the Access Point.

I might have to go buy one of these and take a look at what’s possible!

Linux on the Linksys wrt54g 0.2. A Linux distribution for the Linksys wrt54g wireless access point. [freshmeat.net]

Mesh Networking continues to emerge
As I have been watching the wireless world explode over the last 8+ years, I have begun to realize that “mesh networking” is where it’s at. Mesh networking is the peer-to-peer solution in the wireless world. It begins to leverage the power contained in each radio to provide “relaying” capabilities for other nodes. Mesh will break the trend of “client-server” designs of traditional multi-point radio networks, and allow for self-configuration and distributed designs.

Mesh networking is going to change the entire way that wireless networks are designed, and also enhance the overall usability and capabilities of these networks. These guys are working in the right area!

Firetide Intros Mesh Routers. You can sign up to be an early adopter: Firetide is introducing a cool new product that it calls a wireless mesh router. It aims to eliminate the wired backhaul from traditional APs. So a company could distribute a slew of Firetide routers which self-configure to pass data from one to the next, back to an AP that is connected. Firetide is also opening the door to companies that want to be part of its early adopters program. HP Labs is already using Firetide gear. In a briefing Firetide gave to Glenn a few weeks ago, the company discussed some specific scenarios, such as unwiring hotels, in which so many of the costs were in the wireline side that their products could drop a project’s cost by more than half…. [Wi-Fi Networking News]

Faster, smaller, more …
In continuing to watch the advances in technology, it was great to see this article that talks about some of the advances in hard disk technology.

I was talking with some friends the other day about going to Costco and being able to buy 160GB hard disks for less than $1 / gigabyte! When I looked on-line I found 200GB hard disks at extremely affordable prices also. It is amazing to me that it is now affordable to have 1 terabyte of storage at home - if you wanted to - for ~$1000 … in 2004.

The rate of technology evolution is still cranking along. Even though this article refers to a slight slow-down, I believe it will be made up for in the near future. Anyone want to guess on when we’ll see the first 1000GB drive? Will it be within the next two years?

Seagate spins 100GB platter. Seagate Technology on Tuesday said it has pushed the data-density envelope in the disk-drive industry, announcing a product that squeezes 100GB onto a single 3.5-inch platter. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

A nice Network Management Tool
I use MRTG for monitoring and graphing many of the devices on my personal network, and also on our 80211.net wireless network. MRTG is a very simple, yet powerful application. I happened to come across this project the other day, and we’re about to give it a test. It appears to be a very good extension of the capabilities of MRTG without getting too complex.

NetMRG 0.10pre2. A network monitoring, reporting, and graphing system. [freshmeat.net]

Advances in model rocketry …
When I was growing up, I really enjoyed building and launching model rockets. There were several of us in my neighborhood that would buy and build the Estes Rockets that we bought at the local hobby shop. I remember that we all would look through the Estes catalogs at all of the new rockets, the multi-stage rockets, and the rockets that had payload capabilities.

One of the neat gadgets that you were able to buy from Estes was a camera that would take the 110 film cartidges. It would take a series of pictures as the rocket went through its flight. You would have to take the film to get developed after recovery. I remember that we all talked about getting one of these cameras.

This article brought back all of these memories as these guys have taken this to a whole new level. They are now putting a video camera in a model rocket, and sending live video feeds back to the ground as the flight takes place. Amazing. I went to their site, and enjoyed checking out the recorded videos that they had.

Pretty soon, with a set-up like this, you’ll be able to watch them launch their rockets live! All it will take is tying their existing video feeds to a streaming video server attached to the Internet. They might be able to use a 802.11 point-to-point wireless link to get from their “launchpad” to the Internet.

If I get motivated … maybe I’ll play around with some of this stuff … it might be fun!

2.4GHz Wireless Video from Model Rocket [Slashdot]

Preparing for Sundance!
In preparation for the Sundance Film Festival, 80211.net is glad to announce the coming of another location - in Park City, Utah!

The Bad Ass Coffee Company at 651 Park Avenue will have Ethernet and 802.11b Wireless Internet Access for anyone wanting to grab a cup of coffee and jump on the Internet. The installation is being done now, and is scheduled to be completed by Friday.

80211.net provides low-cost, high-speed Internet access at several locations in Salt Lake City, and this new location expands our reach to the Park City area. A complete list of 80211.net Internet Access Locations can be found here!

More on Google …
I posted about Google a couple of weeks ago (or months ago?) and expressed how impressed I am by this company. This is another post to expand on my thoughts about why I consider them so amazing.

There are a number of organizations across the planet that are all exploring ‘artificial intelligence’ and the creation of ‘thinking machines.’ I often believe that people miss the point when they see these being created within a single computer, or even having some sort of human form or appearance. In my opinion, it will be massive clusters/networks of machines that will give birth to ‘artificial intelligence.’ All of this will occur - IMHO - just as the brain works … through the accumulation and abstraction of huge volumes of ’sensory’ data, combined with powerful pattern matching.

So this is where Google steps in. Google’s architecture is one that is massively distributed, and contains evolving pattern matching capabilities. Google is constantly ‘crawling’ or ’spidering’ the Internet web sites gathering massive amounts of raw data, human knowledge, and anything else it can find. All of this data is then stored (cached), ranked, and indexed. When you go to Google and make a query, they use some very sophisticated pattern matching to return the results.

To get an idea of the types of pattern matching that are emerging from Google’s data, go take a look at their Google Sets. To see what this is capable of, enter three or four names of small towns near where you were born … click Small or Large sets and see what you get. It’s pretty cool.

So how does Google get even better? Well, one way would be to have humans type information and knowledge into Google so that it doesn’t have to go crawling and hunting for it. How would you do that? First, have it subscribe to all of the news groups that are used by millions(?) of Internet users. All of their posts would then flow into the databases of Google. Second, purchase a “Web Logging”, or ‘blogging’ company and offer the service for free. Users of the service would then be typing their thoughts, ideas, and knowledge directly into the Google databases.

And that is exactly what Google has done. Buying DejaNews gave them the NNTP news feeds and the first capability. Buying Blogger gave them the second capability. Google now has millions(?) of Internet users filling their databases with vast amounts of human knowledge. For free! This article seems impressed that Google purchased Blogger, and then chose to ‘give the product away for free.’ What else would they do? There is nothing like being able to ‘employ’ people for your business and not have to pay them!

Google is amazing …

Google Helps Offer Blogger Pro For Free [Slashdot]

Fuel Cell progress … Laptops, and that means Wearables!
This is a good article about the progress of methanol fuel cells. Apparently, there are several laptop vendors who are going to introduce Methanol Fuel Cell batteries for their laptops in 2004. It seems that the form factor and size for laptops is perfect for this.

If they are going to work for laptops … they will be perfect for wearable computers!

Fuel Cells To Appear In Laptops In 2004 [Slashdot]

Testing another operating system … ReactOS … virtually!
I haven’t yet written about my experiences with Microsoft Virtual PC (formally a product from Connectix) however I am using it again today … to take a look at another operating system - ReactOS.

First some comments on Virtual PC. While I was working at Novell, I had the opportunity to use VMWare, a product that allowed me to run multiple operating systems on my laptop - at the same time. Connectix created a similar product and was then bought by Microsoft … and that product is now Microsoft Virtual PC. The incredible thing about Virtual PC is that I will now test and experiment with almost any operating system now … since I don’t have to find an extra computer with a clean hard disk! Now I just run Virtual PC, create a “virtual” computer, and then boot the CD ISO image and install! All of this is while I’m sitting here typing this blog post, and watching my e-mail.

I have now installed numerous operating systems in Virtual PC - including an old version of CP/M 86 that I found - and it’s amazing to have the ability to run almost any operating system as an application under Windows.

ReactOS appears to be an open source attempt to recreate Windows NT v4.0 … or something close to it. The installation went very smooth, however booting it within Virtual PC didn’t take me too far. I got to where it’s checking the C: drive … and it hangs.

Looks like I’ll have to take a look at it when the next update is released … or when I can find some physical hardware. It might be a while.

ReactOS 0.1.3. A GPL open source implementation of an operating system like Windows NT [freshmeat.net]

RSS … the alternative to e-mail …
I really like the essay that Adam has written about using RSS as an alternative to the existing protocols used by traditional e-mail. In the “essay” link below, Adam outlines many of the advantages and ways that this could become a much more effective medium for communication when compared to e-mail.

The one area that I have to disagree a little - or at least have my own ideas - is when it comes to managing the “publish-subscribe” relationship creation. He indicates a variety of ways to encrypt the content, however after doing a lot of work in the past on digital identity, I have to think that there are some ways that I like the “username/password” schemes much better.

In my own thoughts, I believe there is a space for the creation of a new “personal introduction” protocol for the creation of digital relationships. This protocol - and I’m only beginning to think through how this would work - would automate the management of identity information, and the exchange of the necessary information to create the relationship.

I have to agree with Adam, that once such a relationship has been created between two people (or entities) then the ability to terminate the relationship becomes much easier. The entire process becomes a “pull” of information that I am interested in … instead of being spammed with information that I do not want!

email dying - rss alternatives. Steve Outing [via sn]: “Any e-mail publisher with a survival instinct should be publishing RSS feeds of the content that it currently e-mails.” Nomention of my essay, so here’s the link again. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

Oh yeah … the posting gap!
I forgot to post today about getting Radio back up and running. Just before Thanksgiving (just after my last posts) my hard disk on my laptop died. It was finally time to move to my new laptop.

I’ll be writing more about the adventure, however the short version is that I have almost recovered everything, I have learned about being better about backing up, I am now using Windows XP and all of it’s new features, and I really like my new Dell Latitude!

So I’ll be posting more to catch up on other events … stay tuned!

Open Source Terrorism?
I can understand that many people are upset and confused about the SCO Group and their issues with Linux. Some of these people are, however, taking an approach that is a modern form of terrorism to demonstrate their upset.

Numerous times now, hackers on the Internet have mounted large Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attacks on SCO computers and web sites. To do this, they have hacked into hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of computers on the Internet, and have installed “zombie” software that sends packets of data to the SCO computers. All of these packets can then overload the capacity of these computers, and makes the SCO web site, and other service, unavailable.

There are numerous issues with this approach to dealing with being upset. First, this is a blatant form of terrorism. No matter what anyone “feels” about the situation, SCO is following the letter of the law to pursue its rights. Within the Democratic society that we live in, SCO is using the courts and legal system to pursue the resolution of the issues that it has with its licensees. It is absolute terrorism if all companies across the globe can expect to be attacked for using the judicial system that we have created.

Secondly, as this article talks about, these attacks are not only impacting SCO, but many other companies. This again is a form of terrorism where “innocent bystanders” are being impacted by the attacks aimed at SCO.

It is too bad that even in this new age of computers and the Internet, there are those who still resort to these tactics to attack those who are pursuing their rights within the systems we have created.

SCO DOS Harming Innocent Bystanders [Slashdot]

Steve Mann is still leading in new directions …
As always, I am impressed with Steve Mann and his thoughts on “cyborgs” and the extension of humans using technology. He has already run into numerous societal issues, and always explores the extreme edges of wearable computers, and “mediated” reality.

Cyborgs unite!. Professor Steve Mann just may be the world’s first cyborg rights activist. It is a future, he says, that is no longer the exclusive preserve of science fiction. [CNET News.com]

TMDA … an anti-spam solution …
Several years ago, while at Novell, I began work on a simple idea that I called AgreeMail. It never went anywhere, however it was an anti-spam solution based on an idea that I got at a Foresight Institute conference.

The idea was pretty simple. For any e-mail that was sent to me, the AgreeMail engine would check to see if it came from an “approved” sender. If it wasn’t, then it would automatically kick back an e-mail to the sender with an “agreement” that had to be replied to. When the AgreeMail engine received the “agreement” it would add the person to the approved list and let their e-mail through.

Well … years later … here is the solution as an Open Source project! I am now updating my mail server, and will soon be installing the TMDA engine.

This article is a great overview of TMDA, and the benefits!

TMDA Ends Spam. Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) is a challenge/response style anti-spam system which I’ve been using successfully for about six months. The system is based on a white list. When someone not on the list sends me a message, their message is held in a queue, and a challenge is emailed back to them. When they respond to the message, they’re added to my white list, and their original message is delivered to me. I’ve seen some resistance to systems like TMDA. This resistance comes in two basic objections: (1) it doesn’t work, and (2) it’s too rude. These objections are based on encounters with systems with various obvious faults, but condemning all challenge/response systems based on some bad implementations is like saying that cars are a bad idea because the Model A Ford has some problems. I intend to show that TMDA works well and that the real debate is over whether a system like it makes victims out of the people who aren’t using it. [kuro5hin.org]