Monthly Archives: January 2004

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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!

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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!

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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]