Messages

201

Living Room / Re: A Gift for the Hackers - Documentary

« on: January 09, 2013, 06:13 PM »

Maybe my brilliant idea of custom fabricating an aluminum desk with 5U of 19" rackspace builtin is actually a really good idea, and I should look into producing more of them to sell. So far the prototype of it is coming along nicely- it'll have 5U 4post rackspace, below that for tower style systems and UPS units, and the rest of it is all shelves for small devices and DVD cases.

Cause then I can put a junky old 1U server bought for a song into one of the slots and use it as a router via iptables. Nothing gets in or out without my permission, none of that uPNP madness, and if I want to remote control something I can SSH the firewall for a secure connection from anywhere.

I've known about web accessed printing for some time. It's hardly a new feature in the business model equipment, and is handy in larger environments to be able to print something directly to the desk of the CEO instead of having to fumble around with secretaries and scheduling appointments.

But for SOHO use, remote printing is of limited use outside of normal LAN printing over a wifi, and remote scan is outright insane.

I'd rather have people emailing me stuff to print at my choosing, because being able to remotely access print and scan features is almost guaranteeed to attract malicious and ad driven uses. As it is fax machines with published numbers get regular unsolicited messages. Imagine if they can scan a document you left on the scanner first, and then after a few such scans sell your info to advertisers to remotely print ads with.

202

Living Room / Re: NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

« on: January 09, 2013, 12:02 PM »

For less than one third the cost of an aircraft carrier* we might actually learn something new? Plus benefit from all the ancillary technology that would need to be developed to pull this off? Possibly even become inspired enough in the process to maybe pull our heads out of...um..the sand...and. as a nation, recapture our sense of adventure and scientific curiosity?

Now that is tempting...

----------------------------
*Ford Class carrier: $5 billion R&D + $9 billion each to produce. One (Gerald R. Ford CVN-78) has already been built. Two additional have been budgeted and scheduled to enter service in 2013 (John F. Kennedy CVN-79) and 2018 (Enterprise CVN-80).

-40hz (January 09, 2013, 09:15 AM)

When you put that on the table for comparison, space suddenly has a lot more reason to be visited. We won't need to worry about the Chinese taking over when we can divebomb them from space, and have colonies on other planets to support ourselves with if they decide to nuke the mainland.

Both result in the same thing though- workers being employed building these vessels, researchers being employed developing the designs further, an all kinds of industries growing up around the demand and spinoff products they will yield.

203

Living Room / Re: Probably the single best idea I've seen in a *very* long time.

« on: January 06, 2013, 09:39 AM »

I only carry my phone at all in case of emergencies, and for the convenience of keeping track of time on a device that isn't likely to get my arm caught in a machine.

For the most part it never rings- and when it does it gets ignored unless the person calls twice in a row, and text messages to it are ignored unless they are from known sources.

So I would clean house on a game like this, because most of the time I don't even look at my phone anyway other than making sure it is in my pocket when I leave.

204

Living Room / Re: Charging for Links to Your Site?

« on: January 06, 2013, 09:35 AM »

What a hassle. Now I have to go find about 3000 website owners who have linked to my site and charge them a modest fee for it.

(Maybe I should have done this sooner.)

No. Just no. This is what happens when business people try to understand how the internet works. They are guaranteed to mess it up and ruin it for everyone.

205

Living Room / Re: Probably the single best idea I've seen in a *very* long time.

« on: January 05, 2013, 06:35 PM »

The phones should all be silenced with no vibrate either.

Different models of phones will vibrate with different patterns, making it identifiable.

Not only that, but a vibrating phone could cause the stack to tip over. Someone would have to pick it up cause it would be in the way, and they would of course look at it.

206

Living Room / Re: NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

« on: January 05, 2013, 06:28 PM »

 I have a much better idea, let's spend that $2.6 billion on our own economy.  I'm not anti-NASA or anything, but this is somewhat extreme even for NASA, especially for that amount of money that could be better spent elsewhere....

-Tinman57 (January 05, 2013, 06:23 PM)

I have a feeling that this is just a hypothetical. They are looking at okay what would it take to do this, they're not going to actually do it.

Cause it doesn't really fit the pattern for what NASA would normally be doing.

Although building the rockets required to make this happen would most certainly be an economic stimulis. This is where people get the space program wrong.

Those billions of dollars spent on each flight?

It's not wasted. That money went into the hands of the engineers and scientists that made it possible, and the factory workers making the hardware. Billions of dollars into the US economy, and indeed the global economy for each rocket built regardless of if it succeeds in its mission or not.

A fair portion of that comes back as income taxes, and it also kicks up revenue from other sources as other industries move in to profit from the technology developed by the space program. Ultimately it could be a very profitable business even if only 1 out of every 2 rockets leaves the ground without exploding, although scientific success is far better than a high failure rate.

And I'd much rather see that kind of money spent paying people to build rockets as government employees or their subcontractors rather than being given away as handouts through Social Services because there aren't enough jobs.

Building rockets is a bigtime industry with a lot of work to be done.

207

Living Room / Re: NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

« on: January 05, 2013, 05:26 PM »

Yeah, an asteroid only 7m in diameter would do less damage than one of our own rockets falling out of orbit. After all asteroids are mostly inert metallic components, while our ships frequently contain quantities of rocket fuel, nuclear materials, and battery chemicals.

The change in tidal forces such an asteroid would produce would be nigh insignificant, and if anything goes wrong our descendants in the distant future can just launch a giant ball of garbage to deflect any errant moons or asteroids safely away from the earth.

208

Living Room / Re: LED Quality

« on: January 04, 2013, 03:47 PM »

Depends more on the fixture than the LED itself.

I've had amazingly good results with LED floodlights from RAB. They are being used as dusk to dawn security lighting, each 39W fixture being a rated equivalent to a roughly 150W Metal Halide floodlight in similar applications.

Haven't yet gotten to try other RAB fixtures besides their floodlights and wallpacks operating as dusk to dawn security lights, but they seem to be one of the brands that actually has this down.

Something I did notice though is many replacements for Halogen floodlights in fact use slightly more power than the compact flourescent versions, although the tradeoff is the CFL versions take a few minutes to reach full intensity in cold weather while the LED lamps are instantly at full power.

Definately though, don't trust the knockoffs. Because LEDs generally produce light from a cluster of emitting surfaces instead of a single wire or tube they are very sensitive to the design of the reflector and the fixture they are used in.

For the most part though applications that do not need cold weather performance will be fine with compact flourescent type lights until the LED market stabilizes and the poor quality brands get a deserving reputation to identify what brands are to avoid.

I do have some LED powered Par38 lamps serving inside machines though. Although their efficiency is only barely better than a CF type equivalent, they do have the added advantage of being vibration resistant- something needed in a machine that is prone to shaking half the building.


Also fine print. LEDs do produce some heat, although not much by themselves. It is their power supplies that need the heatsinks and are responsible for most of the efficiency loss. But overall the heat output of a well built LED will be significantly lower than any other type of light.

209

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« on: January 04, 2013, 12:06 PM »

^^ It's not like ads really serve anyone except the advertisers. I think it was Tinman that pointed out that there is no truth in advertising. I don't particularly have all that much sympathy for purely ad supported businesses. If the product were that good, people would simply pay for it. There are other ways to make money without ads. Maybe they should stop whining and start trying to think about their business.

-Renegade (January 04, 2013, 06:49 AM)

When selling web hosting from my servers, I find consistently that I actually make more money by putting advertising on a free client's website than I would make selling them the same quota of resources on my servers.

The benefits of ads to companies advertising to promote their products may be sketchy, but I very clearly make money from them. An entire sector of the web hosting industry is built around the ad-powered free hosting model, as it can be highly cost effective to operate.

Adblocking on the other hand hurts my bottom line. I do make a point of asking people on the sites I host to not block the ads, although it is ultimately their choice if they want to block them or not.

Yes I can make money from clients that pay me directly for a fixed quota, but in what amounts to a financial paradox of sorts I actually make more money by giving away my services than I do selling them. Assuming that the resources I give away are used to capture regular traffic, which drives the ad conversions into profit.

But all that aside, since it is a valid business technique, the sharp drop in internet usage that imposing any regulations as strict as they are suggesting would be a financial doomsday for thousands of small businesses that are able to make a fair profit out there. People would just plain stop using the internet if they could no longer do so without having to be afraid of accidentally breaking the law.

210

Living Room / Re: Video games Under Scrutiny AGAIN

« on: December 23, 2012, 01:29 AM »

Plus most videogames have a feature where if you screw up you get killed. That basic rule in nearly every game serves as a constant reminder that one cannot simply do this kind of thing for real, because in reality you can't respawn if you mess up and get shot.

-SeraphimLabs (December 23, 2012, 12:56 AM)

Then again, not to overestimate the intelligence of some gamers, they may well think that "the game will go on", and not really contemplate the consequences of their actions. Remember, this is the same crowd where you get reports of people dying because they forgot to do things like eat, drink, and sleep.

-Renegade (December 23, 2012, 01:02 AM)

Yeah but such happenings are a minority among people who play videogames. There are the casuals- people who enjoy a game once and a while but don't seriously play any particular game, the weekend warriors (Like me) who will sit down with a game on a weekend or a night with a few hours free and enjoy it in depth, and the hardcore gamers who other than playing their game do nothing else that they don't absolutely have to do.

For the most part such events and related phenomena such as videogame addicts only appear in the hardcore category, as other types tend to maintain enough of an attachment to reality to not be consumed by their game for more than a session's duration at a time.

Otherwise said games would have long been deemed hazardous to one's health in more severe ways than just the risks of sitting around too much enjoying them, and would have been either regulated like smokes or outright pulled from shelves.

211

Living Room / Re: Video games Under Scrutiny AGAIN

« on: December 23, 2012, 12:56 AM »

I would think that violent videogames would have the opposite effect.

People can safely vent frustrations with reality into violent video games, simulating things that in reality would have deadly results without any physical harm other than possibly the medical effects of sitting in front of an electronic device for hours on end.

Plus most videogames have a feature where if you screw up you get killed. That basic rule in nearly every game serves as a constant reminder that one cannot simply do this kind of thing for real, because in reality you can't respawn if you mess up and get shot.

212

Living Room / Re: Broadband Caps

« on: December 23, 2012, 12:41 AM »

My Verizon device has been limited to 10GB per month, up from 5GB per month for an additional $30 per month on the bill. About a year ago it went from being a 3G type connection with a top speed of perhaps 768KB/s to a 4G device that at one point clocked against an unloaded tower for nearly 20MB/s down. (Actual usage is far lower, perhaps 8-10MB/s due to tower congestion).

Needless to say the most I can do with it beyond browsing forums and checking my email is playing MMORPGs. It can only barely handle TF2 or Minecraft for any length of time without making a major spike in my quota and risking going over, and a couple of months now I've ended up going significantly over.

Although Verizon Wireless doesn't implement a hard cap like Hughesnet did, their price scale for overages makes it potentially painful to go more than a few gigabytes over quota.

I can see where they would look at the user statistics and go "Ok this tiny group is using up almost all the bandwidth, lets punish them."

But the end result then gives the effect where they want people to buy the service and then not use it, actively punishing those that do with data caps and overages. The reason there is such a wide range of traffic patterns is because some people use the internet continually during the day, while other people barely get online at all. And these capping strategies do not take that into account at all when calculating limits.

Although at the same time, data caps themselves are not specific to end users.

Servers often have data caps as well, where they serve a role in allowing a provider to effectively provision equipment and connectivity to ensure that speeds are maintained under peak loads and that bandwidth is not being wasted by abusive users such as malware servers and bots.

As a hosting provider, I too provide some data caps. But in my case it is done entirely to discourage abusive users from signing up and for accountability purposes on my end- that way I know at the end of the month my server has sufficient bandwidth assigned that if everyone on it uses their maximum the server does not exceed its own limit. Most of the time if a user actually hits the cap I'll raise it for them as long as the statistics show they are using it legitimately.

213

Living Room / Re: New Desktop parts list (RFC)

« on: December 23, 2012, 12:35 AM »

Any reason you are going Intel over AMD?

-Stephen66515 (December 22, 2012, 08:33 PM)

Recent generations of AMD hardware have almost entirely lost the performance marketplace. Today AMD CPUs are reserved for Wal-Mart discount systems, although AMD GPUs are rooted in the former ATI line and offer top notch video performance.

Hopefully AMD rebounds their CPU line soon, otherwise Intel might end up with an actual monopoly on CPU technology.

The past few days I have been working with a CAD workstation build spec as point of fact. These machines have to combine raw number crunching power with a GPU designed for 3D modelling and CAD rendering. Build target is only $1000 each, minus OS I am just over $800:

Intel I53550 3.3GHz Ivy Bridge
8GB DDR3-1600
Intel 128GB SSD- This may seem small, but these machines should only store their OS and installed software locally. Userdata and work related materials are stored on the server's RAID filesystem
AMD FirePro V4900 GPU- One of the applications requires an AMD Firepro series GPU for proper rendering support of complex designs. Note that this is a CAD rendering GPU, and will give poor performance when gaming.

For the case I usually pick up something practical and under $50, while the PSU is normally around 400W with a target cost of only $70. Newer CPUs don't require nearly as much power as the Prescott era P4HTs which ran on 400W PSUs without issue, so the only other really power-hungry piece of hardware is the GPU.


Also 8GB of DDR3 is all of $35 now (2x4GB). I'd definitely go higher if you can afford it, the build I am working with probably will do likewise once I figure out how close to the build target I am when I have the rest of the pieces included. At the moment it lacks a HSF specification and will need a bay converter to put the SSD into a hard drive bay.

214

Living Room / Re: Ramifications of 3-D Printers for Customer Service

« on: December 21, 2012, 03:44 PM »

Eliminate the shipping costs by (instantly-ish) remotely "printing" replacement parts at the customer's location. Holy shit man ... That's got potential!

-Stoic Joker (December 21, 2012, 01:51 PM)

Not if the customer can't legally print a spare part because the 3D printer could conceivably be used to make contraband such as pirated cars and guns.

215

Living Room / Re: Renegade: A Hero In Our Midst

« on: December 17, 2012, 10:21 PM »

Especially because cars on fire have a certain tendency to explode.

Whatever you do don't let Uncle Sam figure out you were the superhero behind the mask. He'll make you into his chewtoy, and your hard won freedom will vanish against your new-found fame as the media nitpicks every detail about your life. When they're done parading you around, you disappear because they'll have figured out who you really stand for.

Still, well done if that really was your handiwork.

216

Living Room / Re: 0-Day TV Exploit

« on: December 15, 2012, 01:13 PM »

At the same time, if this TV is Linux based then all someone savvy has to do to defend themselves is root the device themselves and update it- or reconfigure it to be more secure.

Its like how servers should avoid using the default settings for exposed services. They're harder to exploit if they are custom configured, as the hacker then has to guess what your settings are.

217

Living Room / Re: Audio Timestamping from Electric Hum

« on: December 14, 2012, 09:47 PM »

the UPS, that way the whole system is operating off-grid with the UPS filtering the ragged power from the generator.

-SeraphimLabs (December 14, 2012, 12:57 PM)

If the UPS needs to be unplugged to force use of its internal inverter, then wouldn't there therefore be no filtering of ragged generator power?

-AndyM (December 14, 2012, 06:44 PM)

The point being that this system is likely relying on grid fluctuations to provide time matching, since grid conditions are sampled and recorded at various points in any given region for quality control purposes.

Using that information as the reference is probably how they are able to fingerprint the time and location by the fluctuations in the audio noise.

Any off-grid power source, such as a stand alone generator or a UPS running from its battery would not have that telltale hum as long as it was isolated from the grid and well away from grid connected equipment.

The UPS only needs to be disconnected from the grid, if it is getting power from a portable generator it won't have the same noise mapping as grid power.

Ultimately this means the government has figured out how to get information from the power companies, and now your power company is in league with the forensics teams.

218

Living Room / Re: Audio Timestamping from Electric Hum

« on: December 14, 2012, 12:57 PM »

Very cool, and pretty scary.

-Renegade (December 14, 2012, 09:21 AM)

Wonder how a recording from a UPS-powered recording device would fare?

-barney (December 14, 2012, 11:13 AM)

Most UPS devices pass through under normal conditions.

The device would have to be unplugged during the recording so that it was using its internal inverter.

Although the same phenomena would be far easier to obtain using an ordinary generator to power the UPS, that way the whole system is operating off-grid with the UPS filtering the ragged power from the generator.

219

Living Room / Re: Apocalypse: Advice Issued For End Of The World

« on: December 10, 2012, 12:09 PM »

Hmm, is there any chance the Long Count Calendar just ends to force users to upgrade?

-MilesAhead (December 10, 2012, 09:58 AM)

That would be a troll of centuries old proportions.

The long count expires and people have to upgrade to a new model calendar.

220

Living Room / Re: Be Careful What You Download - Or Go To Jail...

« on: December 07, 2012, 02:48 PM »

Could have aided a terrorist

But that's presuming that the person handling said material was in fact a terrorist.

Which they had not yet established certainty of, therefore could have aided a terrorist is of no significance in court unless the material in question was in the hands of a convicted terrorist. It completely breaks the rules if material that would be of use to a possible terrorist was held as evidence that someone was a terrorist, because that breaks logic.

At least that is how the court system is apparently supposed to work. I watched a guy almost get away with murder because the evidence was presented on the assumption that he was indeed capable of murder, and that had not been previously established.

221

Living Room / Re: Warp field mechanics 101

« on: December 05, 2012, 12:04 PM »

Wait a second.

Capacitors... of the fluxing kind.

So Doc Brown was on the path of making a warp drive with his Delorian.

Fascinating.

That also explains the space matrix restoration coils. They're using high power EMPs to distort space-time.

Oh my god this could actually work.

222

Living Room / Re: Free Energy, Plant Energy, & My Energy Fixation... etc.

« on: December 03, 2012, 11:41 AM »

Didn't they get the efficiency of photovoltaic cells up like 20% after having been a mere 12% for decades?

I was talking to university professor who was demonstrating some of the new cells with a home energy controller and we got to talking about that.

He actually agreed with me on the idea that since the bane of solar cells is that they get hot, it would make sense to coat the underside of the cells with thermocouples and then mount that on a circulating water jacket to create a temperature difference.
 
The result of such a system would be that the heat difference between the cells and the jacket would cause the thermocouples to create additional electricity, increasing recovery efficiency so long as the jacket circulating pump did not consume more power than the thermocouples produced. Cooler running solar cells would also produce more power anyway, their efficiency would stay higher.


I do like the plant approach though, it certainly is unusual. But in terms of energy output per square meter of sunlit surface, how does it compare to traditional methods like Ethanol- factoring in conversion losses going from biomass to ethanol to thermal to electrical as done in conventional systems.

223

Living Room / Re: Inadvertent Social Engineering - It's that easy?!?

« on: November 28, 2012, 03:41 PM »

I've come across bunches of different examples where the first part of social engineering is scary-easy. "Small towners" think "properly trained security conscious" reps aren't "friendly enough". They are used to and like that Bob at the Grocery knows them and doesn't need ID. I've caught a couple of places doing the "what is your account number" "_________" "Is your name John Smith?"

That kind of thing leaves me thinking "Really?!"

-TaoPhoenix (November 28, 2012, 08:11 AM)

Just did something similar. I have two bank accounts at the same place, and needed to file a change of address form.

Well, I could only find the checkbook for one of them. So I went in and gave them the number I had, and the teller was all "Oh I see there is a business account with your name on it. Should I change that too?"

People really do get relaxed about security when there hasn't been any major events. Like at the local courthouse you have to go through metal detectors and have your wallet/purse x-rayed to make sure you aren't bringing anything dangerous in.

I was sitting near the detector for a while filling out paperwork, and half the people coming into the building set off the detectors, yet they weren't re-scanned or examined. Kind of defeats the whole point of it if the sheriff deputies operating the scanners simply ignore it when it trips.

224

Living Room / Re: Don't You Want to be "Safe"?

« on: November 27, 2012, 10:45 PM »

I don't want to be safe anymore.

I just want to have a place to sleep at night, even if I have to defend it with my own blood.

Is that too much to ask for anymore?

225

Living Room / Re: World's oldest still working digital computer gets rebooted

« on: November 26, 2012, 11:40 AM »

Love that sound.

Some of the industrial equipment I work with was made in the 1950s and 1960s. When you pull the disconnect to power it on all you hear for a few seconds is the clatter of the relays as the vacuum power supplies reach operating temperature, the relays gradually closing as they reach their voltages and connect the next circuit up the line.

Stand near the relay board while it is moving and you hear the steady clunking of the relays opening and closing.

Today that entire board full of relays except for the final output can be implemented in a single PLC box no larger than a beer can, and all but the main motor relays can be replaced with miniaturized components to reduce that wall of wiring down to a little shoebox of electronics.

But where's the fun in that? I have no idea how many hours I spent once tracing wiring, only to find a genuine bug- a box alder beetle had become wedged in the relay contacts, preventing the relay from making the connection. An event of similar nature was how the computing term bug came to be- an engineer working on a computer did exactly what I did and came across a bug having jammed a relay.

A short distance from that machine is one made in 1973. Although it lacks the vacuum tubes, and the relays are fewer in number, it still has its original Pratt & Whitney solid state servo amplifiers constructed from discrete silicon devices before the days of integrated circuits. Alas the computer on it was replaced in 1997, but even that is now considered old technology that people qualified to repair are rapidly becoming hard to find.


There seems to be quite a bit of that- Industrial equipment that has served 40 years or more that is still in regular use. Unlike normal computing hardware that is designed for complete replacement every 3-5 years, the cost of industrial gear is so much higher that factory owners usually repair it over replacing it with newer hardware. And I can't say I blame them, considering that in 1996 one of the smaller machines at this facility was purchased new for $120,000. Today it would be a quarter million dollar piece of equipment to replace.