Author Archives: Scott C. Lemon

About Scott C. Lemon

I'm a techno futurist, interested in all aspects of humanity, sociology, community, identity, and technology. While we are all approaching the Singularity, I'm just having fun effecting the outcomes of the future!

Wells Fargo On-Line Banking

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I have to admit that I am impressed – over and over again – by Wells
Fargo and their On-Line Banking. When my old bank – First
Interstate – was acquired, I immediately joined the new Wells Fargo
On-Line Banking program, and was impressed that I could manage my
personal and business accounts in a single application. The user
interface was easy to use, and I even was able to mix personal and
business on-line bill paying in an efficient manner.

A while back, they further impressed me when I had to locate some old
bank statements for one of my companies. Not only did they allow
my to locate them on-line, they provided them in Adobe .PDF format …
for NO charge! I was able to download and print the statements that I required to complete my taxes …

Today … more. When I happened to go and look at one of my
business accounts, I noticed they added a new link next to each check
that has cleared – View. Yes … when I click the link, it
provides the scanned image – front and back – of the check
itself! Oh yeah … and it appears to be free … no additional
charge!

I’m impressed with Wells Fargo On-Line Banking …

What the BLEEP do we know!?

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On Friday night, my wife and I went to see a movie that was recommended by a friend. What the BLEEP do we know!?
is an amazing film that is like no other. Do not expect passive
entertainment, or the typical story lines. This is a film that
explores the reaches of science into quantum mechanics, and it’s
effects on our perception of reality. It begins to explore our
ability to “cause” in the universe, and how we shape our own reality by
our own behaviors.

The movie is receiving mixed reviews … and that is a good indicator
of controversy! Anyhow … I would recommend this movie to anyone
… and be prepared to think … not just watch!

Mesh Networking continues to emerge

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More than five years ago, I was introduced to the concepts of “mesh
networking” at George Gilders TeleCosm conference.  A speaker from
MIT talked through the basic concept of turning every radio in a
network into a “packet repeater” that was able to send and receive
packets of data … and also forward them on for other users of the
network.

Mesh has slowly been evolving in the various research circles … and
is now emerging in various projects and commerical companies.  One
of the places to look for more information is the IETF Manet working group.  There are several experimental standards that have been developed.

In the commercial space, there are now several companies coming up – LocustWorld is an interesting system being used in the UK, PacketHop is a company using research out of SRI, and now Strix Systems mentioned in the article below.

I am currently working on two different embedded Linux systems … both
of which I want to embed mesh/manet software.  I’m working to have
demonstrable units this winter …

DON’T LAUNCH — The Structured Wireless Revolution.
Mesh technology allows networks to be redefined around business needs,
work operations, data and employees, says Strix Systems’ Bob Jordan. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]

Open Source BPEL Engine

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While working on our Web Services Substrate, we did a lot of looking at
the coming BPEL standard.  While it doesn’t do everything that we
wanted, it provides some powerful functionality, and will only evolve
to be better and better.  I happened to stumble on this Open
Source project providing a BPEL engine … I’m going to go take a look
at it …

ActiveBPEL 0.9.2. An engine that executes BPEL processes. [freshmeat.net]

Interview with Ray Kurzweil in CIO Magazine

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Over the last decade, there are few people that have impacted my thinking, and my perspective of technology and the future, as Ray Kurzweil.
He is an astounding individual who has been able to think far beyond
the bounds of the average person. He has also built and sold
companies that have capitalized on his foresight … and he continues
to move forward.

There is a new interview with Ray Kurzweil in CIO Magazine
that presents some of his current thoughts on where we are, and where
we are going. With my view of the world, I do not question his
predictions of the future … we are living in incredible times …

Problems with PayPal IPN

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I am slowly learning about the issues with relying on an Internet
service like PayPal. They have somehow totally screwed up their
software, and it is no longer calling our system to notify us of
payments as of today.

We use PayPal to allow our 80211.net
Internet customers to purchase Internet Access on-line. When they
make a payment, they expect to be able to use the Internet
immediately. This has been working great up until now, using the
PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) service. Somehow PayPal
has screwed up their systems, and the IPN notifications are no longer
hitting our server … so people are paying, and their accounts are not
being updated. So today I have been fielding calls and having to
manually credit people’s accounts … which sucks.

This is just another example of where the concepts around the Internet
and hosted services breaks down. It is really too bad that PayPal
didn’t test their software updates better before deploying them on
their “live” site. People complain about Microsoft and Windows
… but this is a more important example to me since it is costing me
time and money … and there is no one that is going to recover the
costs for me.

Installing qmail

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I’m going to be writing a series of posts that detail my experiences in
installing a new mail server on Linux.  I have been running a mail
server called the Mercury Mail Transport System on Novell NetWare for a long time.  The NLM version of Mercury
has been robust and works … although it is lacking in some more
recent innovations in e-mail systems.  On top of that, I want to
get rid of my NetWare servers … they just aren’t what I want to be
running any more.

I have installed a server with Fedora Core 2, and as of this weekend I
finally dove in and began the actual installation of the mail
server.  After a lot of looking around, I chose qmail – “Second most popular MTA on the Internet” – and I also wanted to add the TMDA anti-spam solution.

I read through the qmail installation instructions and have to admit
that I was a little worried … until I found the “lazyinstaller for
qmail” at lazyinstaller.net. 
This is one amazing script, and it made the entire process a
breeze.  Once I had the script on my machine, I simply edited a
few parameters to define my primary domain, some paths, and a few other
items.  (NOTE:  I noticed later that I could have used their
on-line generator to create my customized script ready to download!)

Once I had customized the lazyinstaller script, I ran it and was
impressed.  It downloaded all of the source tars, unpacked them,
built the projects, customized configuration files, and set-up qmail
complete with smtp, pop3, imap (both SSL and non-SSL!) and web-based
administration tools.  There was only one error in the script that
I ran (v2.0.2) where a directory was not created for binqimap … I
created the directory and copied the contents of the config file from
the script into the new directory.  At the end of the install,
there was a short note on creating the start-up and shut-down scripts
… and I was ready to go.  I started up the services, and
everything has been running smoothly!

I have already started testing with some virtual domains, and
everything seems to be working fine.  As of tonight, I installed
TMDA, and have now started my testing with that.  I just completed
the first tests there, and it’s working great.

I have a total of ~15 mail domains with 40-50 users that I have to move
to this new server.  I’m looking forward to moving one of those
tomorrow … I’ll post more about my success!

Novell NetDrive … a dying product?

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I have been using NetDrive
(http://support.novell.com/servlet/filedownload/uns/pub/ndrv41862.exe/)
for years now, and it is a very innovative piece of software. It
completely alters the way that people use FTP to transfer files …
making it as easy as “mapping a drive”. With NetDrive I can “map”
a drive letter, say “N:” to my FTP server on the Internet. I can
then “drag and drop” files just like any other drive on my system.

The real issue with FTP is that it is not the most secure protocol that
you can use. Most Linux and UNIX users are using SSH and SCP
instead. SSH is the “secure shell” and combined with SCP, a
“secure copy” it allows you to access your remote boxes through an
encrypted connection. I use both of these all day, and what hit
me was that the usability of SCP – even using WinSCP – is not equal to
that of NetDrive.

I started to check and see if Novell had released a version of NetDrive
that would use the secure protocols, and found that I could not locate
any newer versions of NetDrive! The last one I can see if from 17
Apr 2003! And there is no apparent work on a version that
supports SSH/SCP …

Here they have a very powerful tool that could be used to “seed” the
market and alter how people access Linux from Windows … branded with
Novell’s name … and they seem to be letting it die.

Novell … drop it into Open Source … or update it! You are again allowing a valuable beachhead to disappear …