Make it an orbital platform or on Mars
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Vertical Farming
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The only reason we would need to reduce the space footprint of farm land is to support our ever increasing population. If we as humans care enough and want to think far enough in the future to worry about the continuation of our species we have to get off this rock. Yes Earth is nice and all but it won't last forever.
We should curb population growth or look for more places to inhabit. If you could make this into one section of a space station. Not like the pathetic little one we have now then you would have something. It could be part of a larger movement to colonize space itself. This would eliminate our reliance on planets all together. This is a lofty goal and I think baby steps would be better so instead of making it a space station build it somewhere useful like Mars. Make it part of a larger effort to transform the next most inhabitable planet we know of into one that can support life. If we can ever do this once then the expansion of the human species could be exponential throughout the universe.
We are Humans of Earth resistance is futile!
Nick Powers
p.s. If we ever do find any complex life forms on other planets lets hope they are not very smart and taste like chicken.
If you get a T1 with a SLA agreement it is going to cost you so much that you would be better off looking at alternative connectivity. Unless you live in a rural area then there is a good chance you can connect to some kind of MAN. If you are getting this for your home then you are most likely better off with DSL or cable. DSL will give you a better chance of your neighbors not bogging your connection down because it's not a shared media. Cable, in most cases is a shared media where you and your neighbor are on the same LAN segment. This also add security concerns. Unless you go to a tier 1 provider your T1 will bandwidth will be oversold. Meaning your ISP does not have enough bandwidth to provide all of their customers with their maximum bandwidth. You are sharing the total bandwidth with all the other T1, DSL, dial-up, web hosting, colo customers, etc. If you are going to be running some kind of service that needs to be available on the Internet all the time then look at web hosting, dedicated servers, collocation or a fully managed service.
Unless you are heavily into the business you will not be able to provide the level of service that you can pay someone else for. For true reliability you need redundant servers, with regular backups, UPS, backup generators with contracts for diesel delivery to keep the generators running until the primary power comes back on. Not to mention all the staff it takes to manage such an operation (monitoring, maintenance, and emergency response) on a 24/7/365 basis. Price out what it would cost you to do this then get a quote from level 3 for the same and see which costs more.
Plus, any company that would sell me a raw T1 I would be suspicious of. PRI provides so much more functionality in the same economic area that even I was running a small business and wanted something more stable than a business DSL or cable then I would go with PRI. I could connect it to my phone system and dynamically allocated 64k channels to in or outbound phone lines and data. I would make sure that the ISP i bought this from could provide both the data and the voice lines and that had my PRI terminating into at least an OC3 or I would worry about stability of the company. Using digital phone lines gives you so much more flexibility than a POTS lines. Such features as inbound caller ID (the number the person dialed) so that it can be routed to the correct place. This way your customers cannot call your toll free number for technical support or you can run several businesses or business fronts, like a call center. This is just a small example of the benefits.
When dial-up was king I worked with and for several Internet service providers and then smart ones ran their entire business using PRI service over OC3 circuits. The lines feeding their bandwidth were handled all of their incoming and outgoing phone calls. All the analog connections from dial-up. When X2 and V90 came out you had to have digital circuits to provide 56K dial-up. In the city I was in ISDN was flat rate from the telco companies. This was widely used for the SOHO community. A raw T1 could be feed out from a provider like this but if the sales person was worth paying they informed the customer of the advantages of PRI long before the sale was closed. The only other type of service that was offered, because this was before ATM was widely available was frame relay but again it was not long before ATM killed this.
With all this said it is not very difficult, in most areas, to find relatively inexpensive T1 connectivity but don't expect any kind of SLA or one worth anything. Most likely the person selling you your T1 will be connected to an upstream provider via a single T1 circuit with 500 or more other subscribers sharing that bandwidth. Most likely you won't notice because most people purchase way more bandwidth than they will every use. If you have ever seen how web hosting companies operate you would laugh at how many people pay for 10 to 100 times amount of the bandwidth they will ever u
After reading the article and many of the responses here on Slashdot I think many of the readers on here are a little off base on what the issues are to many of the problems you proposed that increased CPU performance might solve.
I read many comments about graphic editing. Being that hardly a day goes by where I don't do some graphic editing I think I am qualified to respond to this. The synergy lab at my University, where I am pursuing my Masters in Computer Science, has a Dual Power Mac with 2 Intel dual core 2.66 Ghz CPUs but only has 1 Gigabyte of RAM. At home I have a Dual Power Mac G4 with 2 800 Mhz CPU. I am not trying to argue here that the IBM 970 processors are superior to the Intel, though they may well be (lol), but I have 4 Gigabytes of RAM in my home system. I am way more productive working on my home system due to the increased memory it has. Graphic editing by nature is a RAM intensive process. If I were going to buy a new system that would be dedicated to graphic editing I would first spend my budgeted amount of money on making sure the system had the maximum amount of RAM (16 Gigabytes currently) before I gave any thought to the processor(s) for such a system.
Also, many people mentioned either directly or indirectly processes that simulate AI. I make a point of saying "simulate" because our society has yet to produce any software that can come close to claiming to contain any AI. This is not a problem that can be solved by increased CPU or RAM or any other system resource. The #1 problem that plagues any currently developed program in their attempts to simulate AI is that our society has not developed a strong enough knowledge base of intelligence itself to understand how to write code that gives any acceptable level of simulation of it. If Intel where to release a 500 THz CPU tomorrow there would be no significant increase in real or simulated AI. Though, with enough CPU speed and RAM it might be possible one day to create a tree (data structure) that contains all the possible moves for a game of chess which would allow a computer to play a perfect game of chess this would not be an application of AI, although at one time people believed that chess was an application of AI, we have now realized that this is not the case and if a computer did have the complete tree for the game of chess, a significant accomplishment, it would simply be an application of brute force. I have yet to see any application of AI (again real or simulated) that faced against a human opponent can compete at a level that would challenge the human. Again, this is due to basic lack of understanding and programming skill rather than a lack of processing power. IMHO, that someday man may gain enough understanding and programming skill to not only simulate but actually program AI. When I think of this possibility I imagine it will be one of those eureka moments rather than a slow progression based upon our current study of AI. At best we are currently guessing and hoping that we might stumble on something than can simulate AI and even with all the computing power available in the world I do not believe we would be any further along.
If anything an increase in hardware performance be it CPU, RAM, or whatnot that increase is generally proceeded by more and more inefficient code. Why make your code more efficient when the lack of performance in your programs can easily be overcome by ever increasing system resources?
I remember when one had to upgrade their computer each year to be able to continue to have a viable system. Long gone are those days. I have had my primary system for nearly 7 years now. I will need to upgrade soon but not because my system is lacking in hardware performance but because of the scenario I described above in which programmers continue to use system hardware as a crutch. If some physical limitation were to present itself that prevented the creation of faster CPUs by either increased clock cycles or additional cores then programmers would adapt and we would cont
I am excited about this. Not because it "protect wireless networks in business and government facilities" but that it could be used to help protect me from business and government facilities. Not me personally but protect the people, in general, against what seems to be an every increasing attack on privacy from within our own government (the USA).
It seems that this would have a lot of applications beyond simple WiFi blocking and should block or reduce RF in general. I'd like to know the spectrum it has been rated to block. I did not see that in the article. But, given that it does block RF it might have uses beyond it's stated purpose. Specific rooms that are required to be kept more secure than others could greatly benefit from this. Computers give off all kinds of RF that talented hackers and government employees have learned to pick up on and convert back into meaningful data. If all or at least some of this could be blocked it would surely make for a more secure environment. Not to mention that it should be less costly and easier to deploy than say a lead lined room.
I have not kept up on the latest requirements for securing and maintaining an authorized certificate authority but I imagine the room in which your CA was housed would be an excellent candidate for this type of paint.
I wish they would have gone into more detail about the specifics of the paint itself. Is it oil or water based? I would assume it maintains a high concentration of water as it absorbs RF more than most other substances. That is why people have difficulty with a LOS (line of sight) WiFi connection when there are trees surrounding the LOS because the water inside the trees absorbs the RF (trees are made up of mostly water). So, if you have any land around your property a good WiFi and general RF blocker would be to plant as many trees as you can between you and your neighbors and public access points as possible. Though, water wouldn't be the only material that could be reduced RF leakage. The paint could be doped with other materials such as lead. I bet many of those older homes that used lead based paint were pretty darn secure from WiFi leakage. Just try and keep your kids from eating the paint chips as lead causes dementia.
If it is water based then it somewhat limits it's application because of the potential items that you could not paint. Like anything outdoors. I don't imagine this would help against laser detection but if it were some kind of oil based paint or plastic polymer then one could paint their vehicle with it and it would be much more stealthy. Especially against law enforcement with older, non laser, radar.
This sounds a lot like the paint used on stealth aircraft. If so then I would really like to get some of that. Not only is it designed to be used outdoors but it has to put up with rigors of up to super-sonic speeds.
Even though it's an honorary degree, a nice way of saying a degree you did not really earn, I don't think he deserves even that. To me he will be the most contributing factor in stifling technology in human history. An being such I don't think he should receive any fame, he has assured his place in history in the infamous catalog and that's where he belongs.
The one thing good about him getting it from Harvard is that Harvard is not an accredited university. So, to some point this is fitting that at least he doesn't have an accredited degree. I'm sure he could have gave the University of Phoenix some Vista licenses and gotten a degree from there.
Yes, for example when C++ is compiled it is converted into assembly language and assembled and linked into an executable.
So for the most part the majority of programmers don't need to know assembly language. But, it is definitively not something that should be abandoned because without it making more efficient / optimizing compilers and the like would end.
There is a big difference between a programmer and computer scientists. I think that it is very important for a computer scientist to have a good understanding of how assembly language, and in turn machine language works for future develop of the science of computers. Though, if your goals are to be a Java or C++ programmer then I think you could do without every learning about assembly language.
I can see that. I suppose I was thinking of the cases where intercommunications between the nodes is important. If you don't need intercommunication between nodes then batching would most likely be just as efficient.
If you ever have free time and the computer time... write a simple algorithm that benefits from parallel processing and write one using MPI and the other by breaking up a program into batchable units and see which one is more efficient. I haven't tested this but my money would be on MPI. This is one of those cases where programmers can't argue about it not worth optimizing your code since running in a cluster is so that you can get more performance so any optimization that you can incorporate into your code the better.
It may indeed be easier to write the code but if it efficiency is effecting performance on your cluster that has a problem take longer than it would have taken you to write the more efficient version. Though only testing will let you know.
Who makes all this science possible that allows this new technology work? Computer scientists! If society stopped studding computer science then technology would rush to a halting stop. People might have fancy electronic equipment and the like and I am sure plenty of companies would keep producing it but there would be no improvements.
One thing that the lay person has a problem discerning the difference in is the computer scientist and the computer programmer. I have my BS degree in Computer Science and am working towards my MS in CS. After my BS degree I worked in the IT industry for over a decade and none of the jobs I was working at had the primary task as being a programmer. I view programming and knowledge of programming an necessary evil when it comes to the study of computer science. I am more interested in the middle ground where computer scientists interact with physicists. After I get my Ph.D in CS my plan is to teach in a college that will let me teach both CS and Physics courses, in hopes of help each side bridge the gap.
Programmers are a dime a dozen but real people that are looking to use computer science for what it is, a science, and not a job there is real potential to have a noticeably affect on the world.
You're being serious? saying RTG implementations couldn't be deployed out of fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb doesn't make much since because If they wanted to what would keep terrorists from collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb rather than it just being a byproduct of the searching for it for a RTG?
The bomb that could be produced from a 238pu material would be the most simplest least dangerous type of radioactive bomb known to exist. Not I said radioactive bomb because it wouldn't be a nuclear bomb as that implies a fission reaction whereas with this grade of nuclear material the best (or should i say worst) a terrorist could hope for would be to build a dirty bomb. That is a conventional explosive device that is packaged with radioactive material. They would be better of getting their hands on depleted uranium which is much easier to find sources and purchase directly and would be just as effective in a dirty bomb implementation.
There is more risk that a terrorist group would collect smoke detectors, to extract the americium-241 they contain. Drill a small hole in a hollow block of lead and fill it with the collected americium-241 and point it at several sheets of aluminum and they would have a working neutron gun. Thorium which could easily be extracted from lantern mantles would be all a terrorist would need to create a small scale breeder reactor capable of producing uranium-238. The exact type of radioactive material that was used in the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6, 1945.
And before anyone freaks out about this post and goes calling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or homeland security all of what is described above is common knowledge and is vague enough that it would take someone with considerable knowledge to create a breeder reactor. Someone with that level of knowledge would already know far more than I have stated in this article.
I am pointing this out to demonstrate that building RTG deployments using plutonium-238 is a fairly risk free proposition. If it didn't require a license from the NRC to legally posses the nuclear fuel required I would have long since built a RTG to power my home and neither me, the other residents of my home, or the town I live in would need fear being irradiated or consumed in a nuclear fireball. Also, if any would be terrorist learned of my RTG and it's nuclear fuel source they would not be interested in it since much more destructive isotopes could be obtained, with less effort than dismantling my RTG (which I would notice due to the lack of lights and air conditioning), for both the construction of dirty bombs and / or traditional thermonuclear weapons.
Society has been conditioned to fear anything associated with the word radioactive that research and development into safe alternative power sources using any type of radioactive material has been completely stalled.
There is plenty to be afraid of in the world that we don't have to go around fearing a whole class of materials just because a few of them can be misused. Almost anything can be misused. Look at Oklahoma city; all that destruction from items that could have been purchased at your local ag-coop and Wal-Mart.
From what I have read and seen in the media your run of the mill terrorist is not the sharpest tool in the shed. I contribute this to the fact that if these people would have had the opportunity to become more educated then they would see their cause as what it is: self destructive violence that only goes to label their group and it's message as radical and intolerable. Some of these people might have legitimate complaints about how America has become the world's police but until the realize that they need to take a non violent approach and learn to present their issues in a calm and rational manner nobody is going to listen to anything they have to say and every time they resort to violence society becomes more intolerant. Each attack made towards the US or it's allies only goes to increase the oppressive posture of the worlds largest military body. Which from my understanding is exactly what they are protesting against. I guess they just don't get it.
Well then you would have non multi-threaded code and non parallel code as well. There are only 2 ways to have jobs run on a cluster.
1) Write the code using MPI or it's predecessor PVM. 2) Have non parallel code that has separate programs that each handle a part of the data and batch it to nodes on the cluster.
Method 2 is either done as an initial step to help determine how to split up your processing so you could use that information to write a MPI or PVM version or by people that don't know how to write parallel code (MPI or PVM) but still want to be able to use some of the power their cluster provides.
If you chose method 2 and never intended to modify your code to be parallel then I wouldn't go bragging about your great cluster to anyone that knows much about clusters because once they figured out what you were doing they would be shocked at your ignorance and consider it very humorous that you went to so much trouble to build a cluster but never learned how to use it properly.
So, yes you could use method 2 and batch each node 2 batches and in most cases the operating system would run the second batch it received on a unique core compared to it's first batch though you could not guarantee that since the operating system might think it's better to have both on the same CPU depending on what other processes were running on the system at that given time.
But, what if you had nodes in your cluster that have varying numbers of cores / CPUs on each system? This is quite common. So, you could have a cluster that had 20 single core machines 40 dual-core machines and 10 8-core machines. So, if you could use all of the core on all the machines you would have the potential of 180 cores worth of computing power.
To take advantage of this using batching you would have to have 180 separate programs, each that handled the calculation of 1 / 180 th of the complete solution and have written your batch script so that it knows how to allocate those batches based upon the number of cores a machines has. And again, there would be no guarantee that there would be no instances where a node would have a single core running more than 1 batch, except for the single core machines. This uncertainty would increase as the number of cores on a node increased. for example if you sent 8 batches to a node with 8 cores it would be very unlikely that each batch would be running on a unique core, meaning you could assume that at least 1 core was running multiple batches and at least 1 core was running no batches.
What is even more common is that you have a cluster of varying numbers of nodes with unknown numbers of cores / CPU in each node. In this scenario it would be impossible to batch your code in a manner that would take advantage of all the cores available, not to mention that it would also be impossible to make sure that every node was even participating. In this scenario the only way you could guarantee that your code took advantage of all the nodes and all the cores / CPU of each node would be to write your code in parallel mode (via MPI or PVM) and that the code was also written in a multi-threaded fashion.
It may be more difficult to write parallel code than batching non parallel code, for someone who doesn't know how to write MPI or PVM code. And if any of your nodes contained multiple core / CPU it would be even more difficult to write a parallel version of the code that could take advantage of the additional cores on the nodes that had them. But, if you really wanted to take maximum advantage of all the available resources in your cluster then you would have to write parallel code that is multi-threaded.
It's not as difficult as it sounds since the segments of code that could be parallelized would also be the same segments that would lend themselves to be multi-threaded. Both require segments of code where all iterations do not have dependences on previous or subsequent iterations of the same code segment. Some code can be written in parallel and some must be wr
The operating system on a multiple-core machine can split up the processes but one process can only run on one core unless it has been written in a multi-threaded fashion.
In parallel processing general each machine is running one part of a program, thus one program, and unless that program is multi-threaded as well as parallel then it can only use one core per node on a cluster.
Though, someone who writes multi-threaded parallel applications should be held in high esteem! I don't know any such coders.
I read the article, the information at the company's web site and even white papers written on the compiler. And although I did see one reference to "Multiple computers across a network (e.g. a "grid")" there was no other mention of it.
When I think of Parallelizing software, after getting over my humors mind thinking of a virus that paralyzes users, what comes to mind is clustering. When I think of clustering the train of thought directs me to Beowulf and MPI or it's predecessor PVM. Though I can find no information that supports the concept of clustering in any manner.
Again I did see a reference to: "Multiple computers across a network (e.g. a "grid")" but according to Wikipedia grid computing is defined "A grid uses the resources of many separate computers connected by a network (usually the Internet) to solve large-scale computation problems. Most use idle time on many thousands of computers throughout the world."
Well, that sounds like the distributed SETI project and the like, which would seem even more ambitious than a compiler that would help write MPI code for Beowulf clusters.
From all the examples this looks like a god compiler for writing code that will run more efficiently on multi-core and multi-processor systems but would not help you in writing parallel code for clustering.
Though, this brings up a concept that many people forget. Even people that I would consider to be rather intelligent on the subject of clustering often forget this. And that is that if you have an 8 computer cluster with each node running on a system with dual-core Intel CPU installed that if you write parallel code for it using MPI you are benefiting from 8 cores in parallel. Many people that write parallel code forget about multi-threading. To benefit from all 16 cores in a cluster I just described the code would have to be written multi-threaded and parallel. One of the main professors involved in a clustering project at my university stated to me that in their test environment they were using 8 dell systems with dual-core Intel CPU so in total they had the power of 16 cores. Since he has his Ph. D. and all I didn't feel the need to correct him and explain that unless his code was both parallel and multi-threaded he was only getting the benefit of 8 cores. I knew he was not multi-threading because they were not even writing the code in MPI rather they were using Python and batching processes to the cluster. From my knowledge Python cannot write multi-threaded applications. Even if it can I know they were not (from looking at their code).
Sometimes it's the simplest things that confuse the brightest of us....
He asked the question "Is Linux secure?" and then started talking about how most securiy problems are related to physical security. Then he did state that physical security was a larger problem in general. After that he started talking about Linux users / administrators and what I took from what he was saying was that he distrusts Linux users / administrators.
I have been working in IT security for over a decade and I agree with him that physical security is the biggest risk for most companies. I would also go as far to agree with him that you need to keep and eye on your employees because software / hardware security products do not protect your assets from malicious AUTHORIZED users. But, I wouldn't watch Joe the Linux Guy anymore than I would Mark the Microsoft guy.
From a physical security standpoint Linux is no more or no less secure than any operating system. The simple truth comes down to the fact that if I can lay hands on ANY device I can own it. I've done many Sarbanes-Oxley 404 (Information technology) internal audits. I have these little red stickers that have the word compromised on them. When I am in the physical security portion of my audit I place these on devices that I was able to get to and spend enough time with so that if I were malicious I could gained top level access to, placed man-in-the-middle devices on, stolen, or destroyed.
Only once did a CTO of one of these companies question that these devices (in this case most of their systems) were vulnerable. I went back in the next evening and changed the root/admin level passwords on the majority of his systems. The next morning he had scheduled a meeting with all the major players involved with the audit and some of the top level executives. We soon found out that the reason he had called the meeting was to call into question me and my teams credentials and ability to perform an accurate analysis of their security. I let him present all his "evidence" and then he pretty much demanded that our contract be terminated, that we not be compensated, and that I be escorted from the building and be told not to return. Luckily, the group gave me a chance to respond. Because from the layman's point of view, from which this group was mostly comprised of he had made what sounded like a pretty strong case. Unknown to the CTO I was ready to defend my position. I passed out a list of computer systems and devices (routers, switchs, etc) that were now completely under my control, though not to worry once it had been validated I would hand over a list of the new passwords. Next I passed around a printout of text that was made up of all the keys the CTO had pressed over a 24 hour period. Much of this was pure garbage, him responding to generic emails and the like. But then highlighted in yellow was where the CTO had typed an email to a friend outside the company talking about me and my security audit and how he was going to ruin me and my team. In one portion of that text he stated that the morons he would have to convince were nothing more than trained monkeys and pencil pushers so he would make short work of me and then meet his friend for drinks afterwards. Then mixed in with the rest of his daily babble he logged into several key systems, which I highlighted the name's of the systems the account names and their passwords in red. I circled all the times he typed telnet and explained to the group that although I have not started my systems analysis portion of the audit yet what the dangers of telnet were as compared to the more secure SSH. I then told them that I did not intend to devote any more time to this audit if the were going to follow the CTO's advice and not compensate me and my group. Then I asked if I should leave? The CEO stood up and said "No, please have a seat Mr. (the CTO's last name) will be leaving". He looked so red I thought he was going to explode. I later found out that he had not only been asked to leave the room but was himself escorted out of the building and told not to return. I guess the tr
Do a Wikipedia search for RTG which stands for Radioisotope thermoelectric generator.
It takes the heat produced from the natural decay of a radioactive material and converts it into electricity. For about ever 500 watts of wasted heat you get 100 watts of electricity.
1 kg of 238pu (plutonium 238) would produce 100 watts of power for nearly a century. How much electricity do they need?
The reason I would choose 238pu is because it is pretty safe. If some how there was an accident, which would mean at least 1000 things go wrong in a specific order, and a fission reaction started the chain reaction would not be stable and fissile out in milliseconds.
There is a extremely large demand for seamless high speed wireless communications. Anyone that has a basic understanding of economics knows that in a capitalistic society where there is a demand there will be companies competing to fill that demand.
When people say there will never be seamless (nationwide / global) high speed wireless communications has not seen the big picture. It is not if this will happen but when. We are getting closer and closer ever day. I know many people, like myself, that forgo maintaining a traditional land line telephone (POTS) instead opting to use their cell as their primary phone. When you think about it if everyone in the household needs / wants a cell phone then the requirement for a land line phone becomes redundant. Plus the cost of not having one offsets the cost of your cell service, again that you would have even if you maintain a POTS.
This alone through time will kill DSL. As DSL for Internet became a non option for me when I opted not to maintain a POTS line, not to mention the use of a traditional modem (which I refuse to use regardless). Eventually I foresee a future where the data speed and latency issues will have been solved and people with a cell will have all the Internet they ever will need with them always, right in their pocket. This kills all of the current Internet options (dial up (yuck, i hate analog communication), ISDN, DSL, Cable modem, satellite (man the latency with this option will drive you nuts).
Once we evolve to that point, a point I'm sure will occur within my lifetime. People are not going to continue to put up with gaps in service. I live in what most would consider a rural area, some 60 miles east of Dallas, TX, USA, and I get great reception. But, I am using Cingular on a phone (HTC 8125) that has their latest communication protocol, EDGE. As I have stated in a post previously in this thread I have inside knowledge, from working at Cingular, how new cell areas are brought up. When they install a new cell area to increase their coverage area they put equipment in place only providing coverage for their latest protocol. So, I am pretty sure that the cell areas around my rural town are quite new and that being the case and through empirical evidence Cingular EDGE service here is wonderful. Though, I know many people that complain about Cingular's coverage in this area I know it is because they are using older phones that don't support EDGE. They do this because they don't want to incur the additional cost of installing equipment for protocols that are already being phased out. Plus they benefit from people upgrading to newer equipment. This benefit is not from profit from phone sales as phone sales are a loss leader (sold below cost) to get you to buy their real product: service, more specifically contracted service, so this kind of deployment means that a phone you buy today will most likely get terrible if any single in 2 years. This is great for the provider because your 2 year contract just ended and they will give you a brand new phone if you just sign up for another 2 years.
But I regress, lets get back on track. We are now in a future time where everyone (even children) have a cellular phone and rely on it for all their communications. The demand at this point is going to be coverage and not just spotty coverage but complete coverage. Once again, in a capitalistic society demand will be met eventually.
There are solutions for remote cell towers. Power you say? Look up RTG in Wikipedia. RTG is radioisotope thermoelectric generator. It gets power from a nuclear fuel but without dangerous chain reactions required by todays nuclear fission reactors. RTG get their power from the heat produced by the natural decay of a radioactive material. This stuff is going to decay and give off this heat anyway harnessing some of it and using it for electricity is one of the most ecologically friendly ways of producing power. It even beats some of the more traditional green type power production as scien
I have been involved in the startup up several ISP. All of which were eventually sold to another larger provider. That is generally how it works. At least if you are running it like an actual business and not as a side hobby.
Anyways, I have always though if I was going to be involved in another ISP venture I would make it so I didn't log anything. For those of you that know UNIX I would just send all my logs to/dev/null (essentially throwing it away before it has ever been written to disk). Now, a company like this would have to take very strong security methods to keep from being an easy target. Not an easy thing to do when you don't keep a single log but I think it could be done. The good thing is that the law requires you to turn over logs when they suspect someone and need to track them down. If you didn't have any laws then you wouldn't have to turn over anything and you wouldn't be breaking any laws. I don't know of any laws that require you to maintain any level of logging and all those logs take up disk space anyways. Plus your users would be completely protected because you couldn't be compelled to turn them in for anything since you yourself wouldn't be able to track them down.
I'm for smaller government and privacy is very important to me. Sure people would sign up to my service just to do bad things and the law would be request my logs all the time. The most they could get would be a list of customers. Also, I imagine if people did do bad things and I complied and gave them my logs, nothing, then I bet it would lead to some serious press which would just bring more customers to my service.
As far as P2P goes. It has evolved along with the Internet. systems like bittorrent would work in a completely hidden system because of the nature of the way they communicate. Nobody is a server and all sessions are initiated by the clients. The technical aspects of this would take hours to describe but the short answer is yes P2P would thrive.
I wouldn't use this if you paid me, unless it made me Oprah rich. Anytime Microsoft introduces a file scheme you can be assured they have some hidden agenda behind it. Most likely this will be closed code / format. So, sure you will be able to benefit from all the great features as long as you use Internet Explorer or the like. Whenever Microsoft releases some new product, service, or specification ask yourself what is in it for them? Because the empirical evidence has shown that they have no altruistic motives behind anything they are involved with.
Cingular has the most customers. This means that chances are highest, than with any other cell provider, that when you call someone's cell they will be on network which doesn't eat minutes since on network minutes are free. The only reason I would switch from Cingular is if I moved to an area where I received poor signal. I used to work for Cingular, all be it in their network security division that had little to do with their cellular products. While working there I learned much about how cellular companies operate in general.
A good example of this is expansion of cell sites. When a cell provider puts up a new tower or rents space on a tower they only provide the latest communication protocol from that tower. The justification for this is attrition. They are making the older signals obsolete. This will have you buying a new phone and committing to another 2 year contract. Luckily I have an HTC 8125 world phone that supports all the frequencies from 900 Mhz to EDGE. So, when I am in areas with older cell tower deployments I'll get signal, maybe not the latest and greatest but signal none the less. And until they start using a more advanced protocol beyond edge I benefit with all the new infrastructure (increased coverage area).
What I see as the biggest problem in cellular communication is redundancy. Cingular builds towers and T-Mobile builds towers along with all the major carriers. Even though there may be towers within a few blocks of each other. What I see as the solution is to separate the development, deployment, and management of the towers and their respective cell areas from the service that you choose to use. This way you choose a provider based upon features and cost rather than coverage since every service would have the same coverage. If all the cell towers in the US were brought under the control of a single company and a single communication protocol was agreed upon. The towers could be redeployed in such a way that there would be no gaps in coverage nationwide. The only places you would have trouble getting a signal would be if you were somewhere truly remote like say Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the continental United States).
The way Hide NAT works is that when a user initiates a connection and is being hidden behind a hide NAT IP address the Firewall modifies your source port and builds a table so that when the response comes back it can do a lookup and find out which internal IP initiated that traffic so it can send them the reply. Since the range of possible source ports is 0 - 65535 then the theoretical maximum would be 65,536 active connections. So, it would be possible to hide even larger amounts of computers behind a single hide NAT IP since not all the users are currently accessing the Internet at once. Though, I have never seen such a large number of users hidden behind a single IP address. Since the maximum number of hosts you can have on one Ethernet segment is 1024 then I would imagine that someone with a massive amount of users would most likely hide them behind a unique hide NAT IP for each segment.
Though now that I think about it if you did want to say hide an entire country behind a single IP then it could be accomplished through multiple layer hide NAT. Say for every 100,000 systems (again remember not everyone will be accessing the Internet at the same time) you have a hide NAT IP, a RFC1918 (private one) then for ever 65,000 (since you could assume this IP would always be active since it represents up to 100,000 potential users) hide NAT IP addresses you HIDE them behind a public hide NAT IP. An example like this would allow you to hide 6,500,000,000 so if we ever get an interplanetary network going you could hide an entire planet behind a single public hide NAT IP. Though I wouldn't want to be involved in a project to hide an entire country behind a single public NAT IP. Unless of course it would make me Oprah rich. The biggest problem would accountability as the rest of the world could track it down and say OMG look what someone in China did but without China's help there would be no way to limit the possible suspects beyond that their IP sourced from China.
I am sure there are exceptions like routers and the like that do NAT but I have been in Network security for over a decade and the majority of the NAT is just one function that Firewalls are providing.
Packet inspection, encryption with or without VPN, authentication, NAT, PAT, bandwidth management, etc. You name it and most likely it is being done by a Firewall. The primary product I have worked with is Check Point and I have used it since before it was called Check Point. Back in the days when it was a co venture between Sun and Check Point and it was called Sun Solstice.
I think that current Firewall products, especially Check Point, have gone way over the edge with all the things they build into the product. A good example of this is Check Point's SmartDefense. I worked at Check Point for some time and many high profile customers would buy into the whole SmarDefense sales pitch to only be told later by the escalation team (Check Point's highest support level staff) that to be able to do what they want they would have to disable SmartDefense.
Don't get me wrong I believe in Check Point's products and if I were in the decision making loop I would definitely recommend many of their products but there are some things that have been integrated into their base firewall that is just silly. But, when you have a customer driven product development strategy this kind of stuff happens.
But back on topic, I don't know of any company, beside DSL and cable modem ISPs, that is using NAT that doesn't have at least a basic level of Firewall protection. They are like second cousins they just go together, like peas and carrots.
The Internet service providers will use hide NAT not to save on IP space, that is just an added bonus, they use it to keep you from getting inbound connections so that you cannot run web servers or host games, etc. This way they can charge you extra if you want to run those kinds of services. As far as firewalls go if you want your ISP to manage your Firewall service for you, even if you have a fat pipe T3 or bigger, they will be happy to do it but be prepared to pay. The managed Firewall service will cost you more per month than your Internet connectivity. Though, who can blame them when the average rate for a qualified Firewall engineer is around 80K, say in Dallas TX, and someone with my skill set can demand 100+ annually running a large Firewall infrastructure is not going to be an inexpensive proposition.
The reason IPV6 has not been widely deployed is that the direct consumers of IPV4 addresses changed their ways and starting implementing sound IP address deployment strategies.
When I say direct consumers as it relates to IPV4 the two largest consumers are Internet service providers and large corporations.
I remember when I started my first ISP. Everyone that dialed up to our modem bank was assigned a public IPV4 IP address. Later as higher bandwidth solutions arrived it was nothing for an ISDN user to have a/25 (128 IP, half of what most people mistakenly call a class C). If a customer purchased a T1 then it was negotiated how many/24 (256 IP, again considered a class C).
Now that has changed. Generally unless you pay extra you are going to have a RFC1918 (IP addresses that have been mutually agreed upon to be private). With this type of IP address nobody from the Internet can initiate communication to and of your equipment. These IP addresses are not routed on the public Internet. When you initiate an outbound communication to some server on the Internet your ISP will do a hide NAT to get you out to the Internet.
A hide NAT is when many systems using private address space all use the same IP address as their source when they leave their ISP. So, instead of the good ol (not so good) days where ever user needed a public IP address now an ISP can hide thousands of customers behind a single IP address.
Large corporation use similar techniques. They realized that not ever computer on ever desk need a public IP address. Again, they could use hide NAT and let them all use RFC1918 (private IP space) and when they would go out to the Internet they could either be hidden behind an IP or use a proxy. Also, almost simultaneously the idea that not all the servers in your data center needed a public address either. Your web and mail servers might but their back end database servers wouldn't. These wouldn't even require NAT because for security reasons it is just better if the have no interaction with the public Internet. The web servers could communicate with them with a physical separated network or internal routers could route their traffic to the proper location within their corporate infrastructure.
Two factors drove this movement. First was the fear of running out of IPV4 addresses. Arin and the like were doing there best to scare consumers into rationing their allocation in fear of not being able to get another. Second came from network security. Firewalls and proxy servers and the like were being implemented more rapidly than ever before. This was partly in response to the ever expanding IT bubble that many were sure would grow indefinitely and the majority was due to the realization that without proper security the bad guys would enter you system and start poking around. A system (server environment) can never be made 100% secure but the more money you are willing to spend on security the higher you raise the bar for a potential black hat hacker. As you increase security you make those that don't easier targets so a hacker would go after the easiest to penetrate rather than the more secure environments. This feeds upon itself. There will always be hackers and network security will have to continually evolve.
But back to IPV4. Looking at the current utilization of IPV4 as to what it was say in 1990 you see a completely different picture. The current picture is what was the promise of IPV6 and that is that it doesn't look like we will be running out in the foreseeable future. It's true with IPV4 we don't have enough public IP addresses so that everyone can have all their kitchen appliance connected to the Internet with a public IP. I have listened to many people tell the analogy that IPV6 has enough IP space so that every grain of sand on the planet Earth could have it's own IP address. Well, the truth is that we don't need that many, not anywhere near that many. And though it's true that IPV6 has more features t
Yes but what makes his little project special?????
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That's certainly true. But, does what he has done make a story worthy of being a Slashdot story? I have done far more ambitious projects both on the hardware and on the software level and I don't get a big write up in Slashdot, No.
Learning should be what it is all about I agree. But, if someone learns how to make a circular queue using a link list made up of pointers in C++ he should be happy for himself but is it something that deserves accolade from the computer community? No, I don't think so. This is how I feel about this persons project.
I built a miniature robotic submarine using multiple MCU (PIC, Microchip), developed a real time OS for it (because you can't just port Linux onto an 8 bit PIC without an ALU), developed a lossless communication protocol for controlling devices, and created a LabVIEW program to monitor and control the sub. It displays live video from the sub and can be controlled over a modified wireless XBOX controller. It plots it position on a map from data received from an on board accelerometer, as well as displaying speed, and of course acceleration. It uses pressure sensors (inside the sub) to monitor structural integrity and (outside the sub) to measure depth. It monitors temperature both inside and outside the sub. Inside in case their is overheating problems and outside for data collection.
This is just phase 1. I have already starting designing the phase 2 which will be upgrading the sub 2 16 bit controllers and add an advanced power management system. This will give me the power to program in much more autonomous features. I learned a lot doing this. This is my first project. Before this the only code I ever wrote was the type that would only update files or the display of a computer. There is something very exciting, at least for me, the first time you see your program actually interact with the real world. I did all this and this guy gets all kinds of credit for creating what could be called in comparison a steaming pile of..... but I guess it is who you know and all that.
If I could get the kind of recognition for my project that this guy got for his project then there is a chance that someone out there would see the potential for what I would really like to see my toy evolve into. But, until then I am just some guy at some school that puts way to many hours in the lab.
Just FYI: What my vision would be for this long term would be an autonomous mini submarine that could reach the deepest regions of our planets oceans, while withstanding the extreme pressure, mapping uncharted regions of our planet. I have many of the requirements for just such an upgrade worked out but it would take a university willing to partner with someone like the DOD or some other branch of the military or government to fund it and get authorization for the required restricted components. For example, I would like to install a RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) which would require about 1 kg of 238pu (yes plutonium). But 238pu is completely useless in a weapon because if somehow fission did occur (very unlikely) a chain reaction could not be maintained. This would give my mini-sub ~100 watts of continuous power for nearly a decade. RTG does not use any active reaction like fission instead it draws electricity from heat of the natural decay of the radioactive material. This is just one of many ideas that I have. One of the most noteworthy is how to maintain structural integrity at pressures that would crush most man made objects. But, I'll keep that one to myself for now.
So, though I think what this guy has done is great and all and I am sure he learned a lot and he may have generated some interest in embedded systems but I think there are more deserving projects out there deserving of recognition. My project is one example I am sure there are many even more worthy than mine but I guess I am just confused as to who gets to decide what is worthy and what the criteria is. Is it just luck?
I doubt this will help
More powerful / practical (device just as easy)
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With just a little bit bigger budget one could build something that more approximated a real laptop.
There are plenty of 32 bit MCU (Microcontroller unit) with ALU (Arithmetic logic unit) that have a lot of bonus features built on the chip like: Ethernet, USB, LCD, etc.
Though, you also get some things you would not get with a general laptop like GP IO pins, pins that could detect if a device was on or not, these same pins could be used to activate/deactivate devices as well. Most would have several AD/DA (analog to digital and digital to analog conversion).
I have thought about putting something like this together but I wouldn't make it a laptop I would instead go for a hand held device. A portable data acquisition device.
Either way why reinvent the wheel there are plenty of embedded OS out there. I would go with an embedded Linux then development would be a breeze with a SSH daemon and GCC installed.
Put in a bluetooth chip, Edge, GMS/GPRS RF, and a touchscreen and I'll destroy iPhone *lol*...
Anyone out there that can program a GUI?? (please don't say X11 as IMHO it is why there are no good GUI on UNIX, except OS X (not X11 based)). -- forget this, it is a RANT all of it's own.
Anyways, it looks like his project was a lot of fun.. though with a little thought and bigger budget one could produce a much more powerful / practical device.
I was speaking with a good friend about the direction that both companies are taking. We agreed on some items and disagreed on others. But in general we both see dramatic flaws in the way both companies operate.
They are not in direct competition with each other as many would like to believe. Apple is a hardware company that gives it's operating system away to get consumers to buy their computers. Microsoft is a software company that relies on the abundance of cheap hardware producers so that it can sell their software.
Though with some of Apple's recent decisions this could be changing for them. Forcing Apple to compete in a software market and not depend on their inflated hardware prices to keep the profit margin high. This comes from Apple's decision to switch to Intel (an X86) platform. Though they are doing their very best to keep control of the hardware that "OS X" their flagship operating system that is given freely to entice consumer to buy their hardware. Even with Apple doing all they can to keep control of the platforms which their operating system runs on many people have been successful in loading and running OS X on non Apple hardware. Do a Google search on hackintosh and you will see what I mean.
It seems that Apple has lost touch with it's market. People are not switch from MS Windows to Apple. The biggest increase of people buying Apple equipment is not former PC owners but UNIX/Linux people that like the fact they get all the power of BSD and all the GUI love that OS X provides. A good example of what represents the current PC consumer is a person who was asking me advice about buying a new laptop. I first asked if they had thought about Apple? She immediately responded "NO, I don't want to learn something new". Even after telling her that the new Apple hardware could run both OS X and XP she just couldn't get over the fact that going Apple meant change. This and the fact that MacBooks start at $1099 and she priced out a pretty descent (not entry level) Dell laptop for $650 sealed the deal. While walking her through the Dell configuration screens (website) we came to the operating system section. She had the choice of 4 different versions of Windows Vista. I think most of you would have figured out, just from reading my post, that my friend is a novice when it comes to computers. But, she had been exposed to enough water cooler talk and bad press to come to her own conclusion that Vista was not ready yet, if it was every going to be "ready". Plus, she saw Vista having the same disadvantage as Apple does and that is change. For her to start using Vista means she is going to have to learn something new. For now she is putting off her laptop purchase. She wants to make sure that if she buys the Dell laptop, with the cheapest version of Vista, that she will be able to take her copy of XP and completely wipe it out and use what she knows.
This is how I see the average PC user. How many of them are watching those funny little commercials with the PC going in for major surgery while the Apple is being all super cool and think WOW I'll switch to Apple. I can't imagine that the numbers are very high. In comparison I have spoken with large numbers of Linux users getting an Apple because they love Unix but don't like any of the GUI alternatives. It's like there is to much versatility in what you can do. Yes, I can make a Linux desktop look and run like MS Windows XP or Apple OS X or anything I can imagine but the truth is I don't want to take the time to bother doing any of that. I just want my desktop to work so that I can be productive doing all the boring stuff people buy desktops for. So, what I would imagine makes up the largest growing Apple market is the computer savvy Unix advocate. So, what does Apple do? They make their OS run on X86 architecture. Now these would be Linux converts are either patching together their current PC into a hackintosh, building their own with hardware that is the most compatible with OS X (saving hundred of dollars in
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The only reason we would need to reduce the space footprint of farm land is to support our ever increasing population. If we as humans care enough and want to think far enough in the future to worry about the continuation of our species we have to get off this rock. Yes Earth is nice and all but it won't last forever.
We should curb population growth or look for more places to inhabit. If you could make this into one section of a space station. Not like the pathetic little one we have now then you would have something. It could be part of a larger movement to colonize space itself. This would eliminate our reliance on planets all together. This is a lofty goal and I think baby steps would be better so instead of making it a space station build it somewhere useful like Mars. Make it part of a larger effort to transform the next most inhabitable planet we know of into one that can support life. If we can ever do this once then the expansion of the human species could be exponential throughout the universe.
We are Humans of Earth resistance is futile!
Nick Powers
p.s. If we ever do find any complex life forms on other planets lets hope they are not very smart and taste like chicken.
If you get a T1 with a SLA agreement it is going to cost you so much that you would be better off looking at alternative connectivity. Unless you live in a rural area then there is a good chance you can connect to some kind of MAN. If you are getting this for your home then you are most likely better off with DSL or cable. DSL will give you a better chance of your neighbors not bogging your connection down because it's not a shared media. Cable, in most cases is a shared media where you and your neighbor are on the same LAN segment. This also add security concerns. Unless you go to a tier 1 provider your T1 will bandwidth will be oversold. Meaning your ISP does not have enough bandwidth to provide all of their customers with their maximum bandwidth. You are sharing the total bandwidth with all the other T1, DSL, dial-up, web hosting, colo customers, etc. If you are going to be running some kind of service that needs to be available on the Internet all the time then look at web hosting, dedicated servers, collocation or a fully managed service.
Unless you are heavily into the business you will not be able to provide the level of service that you can pay someone else for. For true reliability you need redundant servers, with regular backups, UPS, backup generators with contracts for diesel delivery to keep the generators running until the primary power comes back on. Not to mention all the staff it takes to manage such an operation (monitoring, maintenance, and emergency response) on a 24/7/365 basis. Price out what it would cost you to do this then get a quote from level 3 for the same and see which costs more.
Plus, any company that would sell me a raw T1 I would be suspicious of. PRI provides so much more functionality in the same economic area that even I was running a small business and wanted something more stable than a business DSL or cable then I would go with PRI. I could connect it to my phone system and dynamically allocated 64k channels to in or outbound phone lines and data. I would make sure that the ISP i bought this from could provide both the data and the voice lines and that had my PRI terminating into at least an OC3 or I would worry about stability of the company. Using digital phone lines gives you so much more flexibility than a POTS lines. Such features as inbound caller ID (the number the person dialed) so that it can be routed to the correct place. This way your customers cannot call your toll free number for technical support or you can run several businesses or business fronts, like a call center. This is just a small example of the benefits.
When dial-up was king I worked with and for several Internet service providers and then smart ones ran their entire business using PRI service over OC3 circuits. The lines feeding their bandwidth were handled all of their incoming and outgoing phone calls. All the analog connections from dial-up. When X2 and V90 came out you had to have digital circuits to provide 56K dial-up. In the city I was in ISDN was flat rate from the telco companies. This was widely used for the SOHO community. A raw T1 could be feed out from a provider like this but if the sales person was worth paying they informed the customer of the advantages of PRI long before the sale was closed. The only other type of service that was offered, because this was before ATM was widely available was frame relay but again it was not long before ATM killed this.
With all this said it is not very difficult, in most areas, to find relatively inexpensive T1 connectivity but don't expect any kind of SLA or one worth anything. Most likely the person selling you your T1 will be connected to an upstream provider via a single T1 circuit with 500 or more other subscribers sharing that bandwidth. Most likely you won't notice because most people purchase way more bandwidth than they will every use. If you have ever seen how web hosting companies operate you would laugh at how many people pay for 10 to 100 times amount of the bandwidth they will ever u
After reading the article and many of the responses here on Slashdot I think many of the readers on here are a little off base on what the issues are to many of the problems you proposed that increased CPU performance might solve.
I read many comments about graphic editing. Being that hardly a day goes by where I don't do some graphic editing I think I am qualified to respond to this. The synergy lab at my University, where I am pursuing my Masters in Computer Science, has a Dual Power Mac with 2 Intel dual core 2.66 Ghz CPUs but only has 1 Gigabyte of RAM. At home I have a Dual Power Mac G4 with 2 800 Mhz CPU. I am not trying to argue here that the IBM 970 processors are superior to the Intel, though they may well be (lol), but I have 4 Gigabytes of RAM in my home system. I am way more productive working on my home system due to the increased memory it has. Graphic editing by nature is a RAM intensive process. If I were going to buy a new system that would be dedicated to graphic editing I would first spend my budgeted amount of money on making sure the system had the maximum amount of RAM (16 Gigabytes currently) before I gave any thought to the processor(s) for such a system.
Also, many people mentioned either directly or indirectly processes that simulate AI. I make a point of saying "simulate" because our society has yet to produce any software that can come close to claiming to contain any AI. This is not a problem that can be solved by increased CPU or RAM or any other system resource. The #1 problem that plagues any currently developed program in their attempts to simulate AI is that our society has not developed a strong enough knowledge base of intelligence itself to understand how to write code that gives any acceptable level of simulation of it. If Intel where to release a 500 THz CPU tomorrow there would be no significant increase in real or simulated AI. Though, with enough CPU speed and RAM it might be possible one day to create a tree (data structure) that contains all the possible moves for a game of chess which would allow a computer to play a perfect game of chess this would not be an application of AI, although at one time people believed that chess was an application of AI, we have now realized that this is not the case and if a computer did have the complete tree for the game of chess, a significant accomplishment, it would simply be an application of brute force. I have yet to see any application of AI (again real or simulated) that faced against a human opponent can compete at a level that would challenge the human. Again, this is due to basic lack of understanding and programming skill rather than a lack of processing power. IMHO, that someday man may gain enough understanding and programming skill to not only simulate but actually program AI. When I think of this possibility I imagine it will be one of those eureka moments rather than a slow progression based upon our current study of AI. At best we are currently guessing and hoping that we might stumble on something than can simulate AI and even with all the computing power available in the world I do not believe we would be any further along.
If anything an increase in hardware performance be it CPU, RAM, or whatnot that increase is generally proceeded by more and more inefficient code. Why make your code more efficient when the lack of performance in your programs can easily be overcome by ever increasing system resources?
I remember when one had to upgrade their computer each year to be able to continue to have a viable system. Long gone are those days. I have had my primary system for nearly 7 years now. I will need to upgrade soon but not because my system is lacking in hardware performance but because of the scenario I described above in which programmers continue to use system hardware as a crutch. If some physical limitation were to present itself that prevented the creation of faster CPUs by either increased clock cycles or additional cores then programmers would adapt and we would cont
I am excited about this. Not because it "protect wireless networks in business and government facilities" but that it could be used to help protect me from business and government facilities. Not me personally but protect the people, in general, against what seems to be an every increasing attack on privacy from within our own government (the USA).
It seems that this would have a lot of applications beyond simple WiFi blocking and should block or reduce RF in general. I'd like to know the spectrum it has been rated to block. I did not see that in the article. But, given that it does block RF it might have uses beyond it's stated purpose. Specific rooms that are required to be kept more secure than others could greatly benefit from this. Computers give off all kinds of RF that talented hackers and government employees have learned to pick up on and convert back into meaningful data. If all or at least some of this could be blocked it would surely make for a more secure environment. Not to mention that it should be less costly and easier to deploy than say a lead lined room.
I have not kept up on the latest requirements for securing and maintaining an authorized certificate authority but I imagine the room in which your CA was housed would be an excellent candidate for this type of paint.
I wish they would have gone into more detail about the specifics of the paint itself. Is it oil or water based? I would assume it maintains a high concentration of water as it absorbs RF more than most other substances. That is why people have difficulty with a LOS (line of sight) WiFi connection when there are trees surrounding the LOS because the water inside the trees absorbs the RF (trees are made up of mostly water). So, if you have any land around your property a good WiFi and general RF blocker would be to plant as many trees as you can between you and your neighbors and public access points as possible. Though, water wouldn't be the only material that could be reduced RF leakage. The paint could be doped with other materials such as lead. I bet many of those older homes that used lead based paint were pretty darn secure from WiFi leakage. Just try and keep your kids from eating the paint chips as lead causes dementia.
If it is water based then it somewhat limits it's application because of the potential items that you could not paint. Like anything outdoors. I don't imagine this would help against laser detection but if it were some kind of oil based paint or plastic polymer then one could paint their vehicle with it and it would be much more stealthy. Especially against law enforcement with older, non laser, radar.
This sounds a lot like the paint used on stealth aircraft. If so then I would really like to get some of that. Not only is it designed to be used outdoors but it has to put up with rigors of up to super-sonic speeds.
I wonder, does it come in red? Hmmmmm.......
Nick Powers
Even though it's an honorary degree, a nice way of saying a degree you did not really earn, I don't think he deserves even that. To me he will be the most contributing factor in stifling technology in human history. An being such I don't think he should receive any fame, he has assured his place in history in the infamous catalog and that's where he belongs.
The one thing good about him getting it from Harvard is that Harvard is not an accredited university. So, to some point this is fitting that at least he doesn't have an accredited degree. I'm sure he could have gave the University of Phoenix some Vista licenses and gotten a degree from there.
Nick Powers
Yes, for example when C++ is compiled it is converted into assembly language and assembled and linked into an executable.
So for the most part the majority of programmers don't need to know assembly language. But, it is definitively not something that should be abandoned because without it making more efficient / optimizing compilers and the like would end.
There is a big difference between a programmer and computer scientists. I think that it is very important for a computer scientist to have a good understanding of how assembly language, and in turn machine language works for future develop of the science of computers. Though, if your goals are to be a Java or C++ programmer then I think you could do without every learning about assembly language.
Nick Powers
I can see that. I suppose I was thinking of the cases where intercommunications between the nodes is important. If you don't need intercommunication between nodes then batching would most likely be just as efficient.
Nick Powers
If you ever have free time and the computer time... write a simple algorithm that benefits from parallel processing and write one using MPI and the other by breaking up a program into batchable units and see which one is more efficient. I haven't tested this but my money would be on MPI. This is one of those cases where programmers can't argue about it not worth optimizing your code since running in a cluster is so that you can get more performance so any optimization that you can incorporate into your code the better.
It may indeed be easier to write the code but if it efficiency is effecting performance on your cluster that has a problem take longer than it would have taken you to write the more efficient version. Though only testing will let you know.
Nick Powers
Who makes all this science possible that allows this new technology work? Computer scientists! If society stopped studding computer science then technology would rush to a halting stop. People might have fancy electronic equipment and the like and I am sure plenty of companies would keep producing it but there would be no improvements.
One thing that the lay person has a problem discerning the difference in is the computer scientist and the computer programmer. I have my BS degree in Computer Science and am working towards my MS in CS. After my BS degree I worked in the IT industry for over a decade and none of the jobs I was working at had the primary task as being a programmer. I view programming and knowledge of programming an necessary evil when it comes to the study of computer science. I am more interested in the middle ground where computer scientists interact with physicists. After I get my Ph.D in CS my plan is to teach in a college that will let me teach both CS and Physics courses, in hopes of help each side bridge the gap.
Programmers are a dime a dozen but real people that are looking to use computer science for what it is, a science, and not a job there is real potential to have a noticeably affect on the world.
Nick Powers
You're being serious? saying RTG implementations couldn't be deployed out of fears of terrorists collecting the plutonium and using it in a bomb doesn't make much since because If they wanted to what would keep terrorists from collecting the plutonium simply for the purpose of building a bomb rather than it just being a byproduct of the searching for it for a RTG?
The bomb that could be produced from a 238pu material would be the most simplest least dangerous type of radioactive bomb known to exist. Not I said radioactive bomb because it wouldn't be a nuclear bomb as that implies a fission reaction whereas with this grade of nuclear material the best (or should i say worst) a terrorist could hope for would be to build a dirty bomb. That is a conventional explosive device that is packaged with radioactive material. They would be better of getting their hands on depleted uranium which is much easier to find sources and purchase directly and would be just as effective in a dirty bomb implementation.
There is more risk that a terrorist group would collect smoke detectors, to extract the americium-241 they contain. Drill a small hole in a hollow block of lead and fill it with the collected americium-241 and point it at several sheets of aluminum and they would have a working neutron gun. Thorium which could easily be extracted from lantern mantles would be all a terrorist would need to create a small scale breeder reactor capable of producing uranium-238. The exact type of radioactive material that was used in the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6, 1945.
And before anyone freaks out about this post and goes calling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or homeland security all of what is described above is common knowledge and is vague enough that it would take someone with considerable knowledge to create a breeder reactor. Someone with that level of knowledge would already know far more than I have stated in this article.
I am pointing this out to demonstrate that building RTG deployments using plutonium-238 is a fairly risk free proposition. If it didn't require a license from the NRC to legally posses the nuclear fuel required I would have long since built a RTG to power my home and neither me, the other residents of my home, or the town I live in would need fear being irradiated or consumed in a nuclear fireball. Also, if any would be terrorist learned of my RTG and it's nuclear fuel source they would not be interested in it since much more destructive isotopes could be obtained, with less effort than dismantling my RTG (which I would notice due to the lack of lights and air conditioning), for both the construction of dirty bombs and / or traditional thermonuclear weapons.
Society has been conditioned to fear anything associated with the word radioactive that research and development into safe alternative power sources using any type of radioactive material has been completely stalled.
There is plenty to be afraid of in the world that we don't have to go around fearing a whole class of materials just because a few of them can be misused. Almost anything can be misused. Look at Oklahoma city; all that destruction from items that could have been purchased at your local ag-coop and Wal-Mart.
From what I have read and seen in the media your run of the mill terrorist is not the sharpest tool in the shed. I contribute this to the fact that if these people would have had the opportunity to become more educated then they would see their cause as what it is: self destructive violence that only goes to label their group and it's message as radical and intolerable. Some of these people might have legitimate complaints about how America has become the world's police but until the realize that they need to take a non violent approach and learn to present their issues in a calm and rational manner nobody is going to listen to anything they have to say and every time they resort to violence society becomes more intolerant. Each attack made towards the US or it's allies only goes to increase the oppressive posture of the worlds largest military body. Which from my understanding is exactly what they are protesting against. I guess they just don't get it.
Nick Powers
Well then you would have non multi-threaded code and non parallel code as well. There are only 2 ways to have jobs run on a cluster.
1) Write the code using MPI or it's predecessor PVM.
2) Have non parallel code that has separate programs that each handle a part of the data and batch it to nodes on the cluster.
Method 2 is either done as an initial step to help determine how to split up your processing so you could use that information to write a MPI or PVM version or by people that don't know how to write parallel code (MPI or PVM) but still want to be able to use some of the power their cluster provides.
If you chose method 2 and never intended to modify your code to be parallel then I wouldn't go bragging about your great cluster to anyone that knows much about clusters because once they figured out what you were doing they would be shocked at your ignorance and consider it very humorous that you went to so much trouble to build a cluster but never learned how to use it properly.
So, yes you could use method 2 and batch each node 2 batches and in most cases the operating system would run the second batch it received on a unique core compared to it's first batch though you could not guarantee that since the operating system might think it's better to have both on the same CPU depending on what other processes were running on the system at that given time.
But, what if you had nodes in your cluster that have varying numbers of cores / CPUs on each system? This is quite common. So, you could have a cluster that had 20 single core machines 40 dual-core machines and 10 8-core machines. So, if you could use all of the core on all the machines you would have the potential of 180 cores worth of computing power.
To take advantage of this using batching you would have to have 180 separate programs, each that handled the calculation of 1 / 180 th of the complete solution and have written your batch script so that it knows how to allocate those batches based upon the number of cores a machines has. And again, there would be no guarantee that there would be no instances where a node would have a single core running more than 1 batch, except for the single core machines. This uncertainty would increase as the number of cores on a node increased. for example if you sent 8 batches to a node with 8 cores it would be very unlikely that each batch would be running on a unique core, meaning you could assume that at least 1 core was running multiple batches and at least 1 core was running no batches.
What is even more common is that you have a cluster of varying numbers of nodes with unknown numbers of cores / CPU in each node. In this scenario it would be impossible to batch your code in a manner that would take advantage of all the cores available, not to mention that it would also be impossible to make sure that every node was even participating. In this scenario the only way you could guarantee that your code took advantage of all the nodes and all the cores / CPU of each node would be to write your code in parallel mode (via MPI or PVM) and that the code was also written in a multi-threaded fashion.
It may be more difficult to write parallel code than batching non parallel code, for someone who doesn't know how to write MPI or PVM code. And if any of your nodes contained multiple core / CPU it would be even more difficult to write a parallel version of the code that could take advantage of the additional cores on the nodes that had them. But, if you really wanted to take maximum advantage of all the available resources in your cluster then you would have to write parallel code that is multi-threaded.
It's not as difficult as it sounds since the segments of code that could be parallelized would also be the same segments that would lend themselves to be multi-threaded. Both require segments of code where all iterations do not have dependences on previous or subsequent iterations of the same code segment. Some code can be written in parallel and some must be wr
The operating system on a multiple-core machine can split up the processes but one process can only run on one core unless it has been written in a multi-threaded fashion.
In parallel processing general each machine is running one part of a program, thus one program, and unless that program is multi-threaded as well as parallel then it can only use one core per node on a cluster.
Though, someone who writes multi-threaded parallel applications should be held in high esteem! I don't know any such coders.
Nick Powers
I read the article, the information at the company's web site and even white papers written on the compiler. And although I did see one reference to "Multiple computers across a network (e.g. a "grid")" there was no other mention of it.
When I think of Parallelizing software, after getting over my humors mind thinking of a virus that paralyzes users, what comes to mind is clustering. When I think of clustering the train of thought directs me to Beowulf and MPI or it's predecessor PVM. Though I can find no information that supports the concept of clustering in any manner.
Again I did see a reference to: "Multiple computers across a network (e.g. a "grid")" but according to Wikipedia grid computing is defined "A grid uses the resources of many separate computers connected by a network (usually the Internet) to solve large-scale computation problems. Most use idle time on many thousands of computers throughout the world."
Well, that sounds like the distributed SETI project and the like, which would seem even more ambitious than a compiler that would help write MPI code for Beowulf clusters.
From all the examples this looks like a god compiler for writing code that will run more efficiently on multi-core and multi-processor systems but would not help you in writing parallel code for clustering.
Though, this brings up a concept that many people forget. Even people that I would consider to be rather intelligent on the subject of clustering often forget this. And that is that if you have an 8 computer cluster with each node running on a system with dual-core Intel CPU installed that if you write parallel code for it using MPI you are benefiting from 8 cores in parallel. Many people that write parallel code forget about multi-threading. To benefit from all 16 cores in a cluster I just described the code would have to be written multi-threaded and parallel. One of the main professors involved in a clustering project at my university stated to me that in their test environment they were using 8 dell systems with dual-core Intel CPU so in total they had the power of 16 cores. Since he has his Ph. D. and all I didn't feel the need to correct him and explain that unless his code was both parallel and multi-threaded he was only getting the benefit of 8 cores. I knew he was not multi-threading because they were not even writing the code in MPI rather they were using Python and batching processes to the cluster. From my knowledge Python cannot write multi-threaded applications. Even if it can I know they were not (from looking at their code).
Sometimes it's the simplest things that confuse the brightest of us....
Nick Powers
He asked the question "Is Linux secure?" and then started talking about how most securiy problems are related to physical security. Then he did state that physical security was a larger problem in general. After that he started talking about Linux users / administrators and what I took from what he was saying was that he distrusts Linux users / administrators.
I have been working in IT security for over a decade and I agree with him that physical security is the biggest risk for most companies. I would also go as far to agree with him that you need to keep and eye on your employees because software / hardware security products do not protect your assets from malicious AUTHORIZED users. But, I wouldn't watch Joe the Linux Guy anymore than I would Mark the Microsoft guy.
From a physical security standpoint Linux is no more or no less secure than any operating system. The simple truth comes down to the fact that if I can lay hands on ANY device I can own it. I've done many Sarbanes-Oxley 404 (Information technology) internal audits. I have these little red stickers that have the word compromised on them. When I am in the physical security portion of my audit I place these on devices that I was able to get to and spend enough time with so that if I were malicious I could gained top level access to, placed man-in-the-middle devices on, stolen, or destroyed.
Only once did a CTO of one of these companies question that these devices (in this case most of their systems) were vulnerable. I went back in the next evening and changed the root/admin level passwords on the majority of his systems. The next morning he had scheduled a meeting with all the major players involved with the audit and some of the top level executives. We soon found out that the reason he had called the meeting was to call into question me and my teams credentials and ability to perform an accurate analysis of their security. I let him present all his "evidence" and then he pretty much demanded that our contract be terminated, that we not be compensated, and that I be escorted from the building and be told not to return. Luckily, the group gave me a chance to respond. Because from the layman's point of view, from which this group was mostly comprised of he had made what sounded like a pretty strong case. Unknown to the CTO I was ready to defend my position. I passed out a list of computer systems and devices (routers, switchs, etc) that were now completely under my control, though not to worry once it had been validated I would hand over a list of the new passwords. Next I passed around a printout of text that was made up of all the keys the CTO had pressed over a 24 hour period. Much of this was pure garbage, him responding to generic emails and the like. But then highlighted in yellow was where the CTO had typed an email to a friend outside the company talking about me and my security audit and how he was going to ruin me and my team. In one portion of that text he stated that the morons he would have to convince were nothing more than trained monkeys and pencil pushers so he would make short work of me and then meet his friend for drinks afterwards. Then mixed in with the rest of his daily babble he logged into several key systems, which I highlighted the name's of the systems the account names and their passwords in red. I circled all the times he typed telnet and explained to the group that although I have not started my systems analysis portion of the audit yet what the dangers of telnet were as compared to the more secure SSH. I then told them that I did not intend to devote any more time to this audit if the were going to follow the CTO's advice and not compensate me and my group. Then I asked if I should leave? The CEO stood up and said "No, please have a seat Mr. (the CTO's last name) will be leaving". He looked so red I thought he was going to explode. I later found out that he had not only been asked to leave the room but was himself escorted out of the building and told not to return. I guess the tr
Do a Wikipedia search for RTG which stands for Radioisotope thermoelectric generator.
It takes the heat produced from the natural decay of a radioactive material and converts it into electricity. For about ever 500 watts of wasted heat you get 100 watts of electricity.
1 kg of 238pu (plutonium 238) would produce 100 watts of power for nearly a century. How much electricity do they need?
The reason I would choose 238pu is because it is pretty safe. If some how there was an accident, which would mean at least 1000 things go wrong in a specific order, and a fission reaction started the chain reaction would not be stable and fissile out in milliseconds.
Nick Powers
There is a extremely large demand for seamless high speed wireless communications. Anyone that has a basic understanding of economics knows that in a capitalistic society where there is a demand there will be companies competing to fill that demand.
When people say there will never be seamless (nationwide / global) high speed wireless communications has not seen the big picture. It is not if this will happen but when. We are getting closer and closer ever day. I know many people, like myself, that forgo maintaining a traditional land line telephone (POTS) instead opting to use their cell as their primary phone. When you think about it if everyone in the household needs / wants a cell phone then the requirement for a land line phone becomes redundant. Plus the cost of not having one offsets the cost of your cell service, again that you would have even if you maintain a POTS.
This alone through time will kill DSL. As DSL for Internet became a non option for me when I opted not to maintain a POTS line, not to mention the use of a traditional modem (which I refuse to use regardless). Eventually I foresee a future where the data speed and latency issues will have been solved and people with a cell will have all the Internet they ever will need with them always, right in their pocket. This kills all of the current Internet options (dial up (yuck, i hate analog communication), ISDN, DSL, Cable modem, satellite (man the latency with this option will drive you nuts).
Once we evolve to that point, a point I'm sure will occur within my lifetime. People are not going to continue to put up with gaps in service. I live in what most would consider a rural area, some 60 miles east of Dallas, TX, USA, and I get great reception. But, I am using Cingular on a phone (HTC 8125) that has their latest communication protocol, EDGE. As I have stated in a post previously in this thread I have inside knowledge, from working at Cingular, how new cell areas are brought up. When they install a new cell area to increase their coverage area they put equipment in place only providing coverage for their latest protocol. So, I am pretty sure that the cell areas around my rural town are quite new and that being the case and through empirical evidence Cingular EDGE service here is wonderful. Though, I know many people that complain about Cingular's coverage in this area I know it is because they are using older phones that don't support EDGE. They do this because they don't want to incur the additional cost of installing equipment for protocols that are already being phased out. Plus they benefit from people upgrading to newer equipment. This benefit is not from profit from phone sales as phone sales are a loss leader (sold below cost) to get you to buy their real product: service, more specifically contracted service, so this kind of deployment means that a phone you buy today will most likely get terrible if any single in 2 years. This is great for the provider because your 2 year contract just ended and they will give you a brand new phone if you just sign up for another 2 years.
But I regress, lets get back on track. We are now in a future time where everyone (even children) have a cellular phone and rely on it for all their communications. The demand at this point is going to be coverage and not just spotty coverage but complete coverage. Once again, in a capitalistic society demand will be met eventually.
There are solutions for remote cell towers. Power you say? Look up RTG in Wikipedia. RTG is radioisotope thermoelectric generator. It gets power from a nuclear fuel but without dangerous chain reactions required by todays nuclear fission reactors. RTG get their power from the heat produced by the natural decay of a radioactive material. This stuff is going to decay and give off this heat anyway harnessing some of it and using it for electricity is one of the most ecologically friendly ways of producing power. It even beats some of the more traditional green type power production as scien
I have been involved in the startup up several ISP. All of which were eventually sold to another larger provider. That is generally how it works. At least if you are running it like an actual business and not as a side hobby.
/dev/null (essentially throwing it away before it has ever been written to disk). Now, a company like this would have to take very strong security methods to keep from being an easy target. Not an easy thing to do when you don't keep a single log but I think it could be done. The good thing is that the law requires you to turn over logs when they suspect someone and need to track them down. If you didn't have any laws then you wouldn't have to turn over anything and you wouldn't be breaking any laws. I don't know of any laws that require you to maintain any level of logging and all those logs take up disk space anyways. Plus your users would be completely protected because you couldn't be compelled to turn them in for anything since you yourself wouldn't be able to track them down.
Anyways, I have always though if I was going to be involved in another ISP venture I would make it so I didn't log anything. For those of you that know UNIX I would just send all my logs to
I'm for smaller government and privacy is very important to me. Sure people would sign up to my service just to do bad things and the law would be request my logs all the time. The most they could get would be a list of customers. Also, I imagine if people did do bad things and I complied and gave them my logs, nothing, then I bet it would lead to some serious press which would just bring more customers to my service.
As far as P2P goes. It has evolved along with the Internet. systems like bittorrent would work in a completely hidden system because of the nature of the way they communicate. Nobody is a server and all sessions are initiated by the clients. The technical aspects of this would take hours to describe but the short answer is yes P2P would thrive.
Nick Powers
I wouldn't use this if you paid me, unless it made me Oprah rich. Anytime Microsoft introduces a file scheme you can be assured they have some hidden agenda behind it. Most likely this will be closed code / format. So, sure you will be able to benefit from all the great features as long as you use Internet Explorer or the like. Whenever Microsoft releases some new product, service, or specification ask yourself what is in it for them? Because the empirical evidence has shown that they have no altruistic motives behind anything they are involved with.
Nick Powers
Cingular has the most customers. This means that chances are highest, than with any other cell provider, that when you call someone's cell they will be on network which doesn't eat minutes since on network minutes are free. The only reason I would switch from Cingular is if I moved to an area where I received poor signal. I used to work for Cingular, all be it in their network security division that had little to do with their cellular products. While working there I learned much about how cellular companies operate in general.
A good example of this is expansion of cell sites. When a cell provider puts up a new tower or rents space on a tower they only provide the latest communication protocol from that tower. The justification for this is attrition. They are making the older signals obsolete. This will have you buying a new phone and committing to another 2 year contract. Luckily I have an HTC 8125 world phone that supports all the frequencies from 900 Mhz to EDGE. So, when I am in areas with older cell tower deployments I'll get signal, maybe not the latest and greatest but signal none the less. And until they start using a more advanced protocol beyond edge I benefit with all the new infrastructure (increased coverage area).
What I see as the biggest problem in cellular communication is redundancy. Cingular builds towers and T-Mobile builds towers along with all the major carriers. Even though there may be towers within a few blocks of each other. What I see as the solution is to separate the development, deployment, and management of the towers and their respective cell areas from the service that you choose to use. This way you choose a provider based upon features and cost rather than coverage since every service would have the same coverage. If all the cell towers in the US were brought under the control of a single company and a single communication protocol was agreed upon. The towers could be redeployed in such a way that there would be no gaps in coverage nationwide. The only places you would have trouble getting a signal would be if you were somewhere truly remote like say Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the continental United States).
Nick Powers
The way Hide NAT works is that when a user initiates a connection and is being hidden behind a hide NAT IP address the Firewall modifies your source port and builds a table so that when the response comes back it can do a lookup and find out which internal IP initiated that traffic so it can send them the reply. Since the range of possible source ports is 0 - 65535 then the theoretical maximum would be 65,536 active connections. So, it would be possible to hide even larger amounts of computers behind a single hide NAT IP since not all the users are currently accessing the Internet at once. Though, I have never seen such a large number of users hidden behind a single IP address. Since the maximum number of hosts you can have on one Ethernet segment is 1024 then I would imagine that someone with a massive amount of users would most likely hide them behind a unique hide NAT IP for each segment.
Though now that I think about it if you did want to say hide an entire country behind a single IP then it could be accomplished through multiple layer hide NAT. Say for every 100,000 systems (again remember not everyone will be accessing the Internet at the same time) you have a hide NAT IP, a RFC1918 (private one) then for ever 65,000 (since you could assume this IP would always be active since it represents up to 100,000 potential users) hide NAT IP addresses you HIDE them behind a public hide NAT IP. An example like this would allow you to hide 6,500,000,000 so if we ever get an interplanetary network going you could hide an entire planet behind a single public hide NAT IP. Though I wouldn't want to be involved in a project to hide an entire country behind a single public NAT IP. Unless of course it would make me Oprah rich. The biggest problem would accountability as the rest of the world could track it down and say OMG look what someone in China did but without China's help there would be no way to limit the possible suspects beyond that their IP sourced from China.
Nick Powers
I am sure there are exceptions like routers and the like that do NAT but I have been in Network security for over a decade and the majority of the NAT is just one function that Firewalls are providing.
Packet inspection, encryption with or without VPN, authentication, NAT, PAT, bandwidth management, etc. You name it and most likely it is being done by a Firewall. The primary product I have worked with is Check Point and I have used it since before it was called Check Point. Back in the days when it was a co venture between Sun and Check Point and it was called Sun Solstice.
I think that current Firewall products, especially Check Point, have gone way over the edge with all the things they build into the product. A good example of this is Check Point's SmartDefense. I worked at Check Point for some time and many high profile customers would buy into the whole SmarDefense sales pitch to only be told later by the escalation team (Check Point's highest support level staff) that to be able to do what they want they would have to disable SmartDefense.
Don't get me wrong I believe in Check Point's products and if I were in the decision making loop I would definitely recommend many of their products but there are some things that have been integrated into their base firewall that is just silly. But, when you have a customer driven product development strategy this kind of stuff happens.
But back on topic, I don't know of any company, beside DSL and cable modem ISPs, that is using NAT that doesn't have at least a basic level of Firewall protection. They are like second cousins they just go together, like peas and carrots.
The Internet service providers will use hide NAT not to save on IP space, that is just an added bonus, they use it to keep you from getting inbound connections so that you cannot run web servers or host games, etc. This way they can charge you extra if you want to run those kinds of services. As far as firewalls go if you want your ISP to manage your Firewall service for you, even if you have a fat pipe T3 or bigger, they will be happy to do it but be prepared to pay. The managed Firewall service will cost you more per month than your Internet connectivity. Though, who can blame them when the average rate for a qualified Firewall engineer is around 80K, say in Dallas TX, and someone with my skill set can demand 100+ annually running a large Firewall infrastructure is not going to be an inexpensive proposition.
Nick Powers
The reason IPV6 has not been widely deployed is that the direct consumers of IPV4 addresses changed their ways and starting implementing sound IP address deployment strategies.
/25 (128 IP, half of what most people mistakenly call a class C). If a customer purchased a T1 then it was negotiated how many /24 (256 IP, again considered a class C).
When I say direct consumers as it relates to IPV4 the two largest consumers are Internet service providers and large corporations.
I remember when I started my first ISP. Everyone that dialed up to our modem bank was assigned a public IPV4 IP address. Later as higher bandwidth solutions arrived it was nothing for an ISDN user to have a
Now that has changed. Generally unless you pay extra you are going to have a RFC1918 (IP addresses that have been mutually agreed upon to be private). With this type of IP address nobody from the Internet can initiate communication to and of your equipment. These IP addresses are not routed on the public Internet. When you initiate an outbound communication to some server on the Internet your ISP will do a hide NAT to get you out to the Internet.
A hide NAT is when many systems using private address space all use the same IP address as their source when they leave their ISP. So, instead of the good ol (not so good) days where ever user needed a public IP address now an ISP can hide thousands of customers behind a single IP address.
Large corporation use similar techniques. They realized that not ever computer on ever desk need a public IP address. Again, they could use hide NAT and let them all use RFC1918 (private IP space) and when they would go out to the Internet they could either be hidden behind an IP or use a proxy. Also, almost simultaneously the idea that not all the servers in your data center needed a public address either. Your web and mail servers might but their back end database servers wouldn't. These wouldn't even require NAT because for security reasons it is just better if the have no interaction with the public Internet. The web servers could communicate with them with a physical separated network or internal routers could route their traffic to the proper location within their corporate infrastructure.
Two factors drove this movement. First was the fear of running out of IPV4 addresses. Arin and the like were doing there best to scare consumers into rationing their allocation in fear of not being able to get another. Second came from network security. Firewalls and proxy servers and the like were being implemented more rapidly than ever before. This was partly in response to the ever expanding IT bubble that many were sure would grow indefinitely and the majority was due to the realization that without proper security the bad guys would enter you system and start poking around. A system (server environment) can never be made 100% secure but the more money you are willing to spend on security the higher you raise the bar for a potential black hat hacker. As you increase security you make those that don't easier targets so a hacker would go after the easiest to penetrate rather than the more secure environments. This feeds upon itself. There will always be hackers and network security will have to continually evolve.
But back to IPV4. Looking at the current utilization of IPV4 as to what it was say in 1990 you see a completely different picture. The current picture is what was the promise of IPV6 and that is that it doesn't look like we will be running out in the foreseeable future. It's true with IPV4 we don't have enough public IP addresses so that everyone can have all their kitchen appliance connected to the Internet with a public IP. I have listened to many people tell the analogy that IPV6 has enough IP space so that every grain of sand on the planet Earth could have it's own IP address. Well, the truth is that we don't need that many, not anywhere near that many. And though it's true that IPV6 has more features t
That's certainly true. But, does what he has done make a story worthy of being a Slashdot story? I have done far more ambitious projects both on the hardware and on the software level and I don't get a big write up in Slashdot, No.
..... but I guess it is who you know and all that.
Learning should be what it is all about I agree. But, if someone learns how to make a circular queue using a link list made up of pointers in C++ he should be happy for himself but is it something that deserves accolade from the computer community? No, I don't think so. This is how I feel about this persons project.
I built a miniature robotic submarine using multiple MCU (PIC, Microchip), developed a real time OS for it (because you can't just port Linux onto an 8 bit PIC without an ALU), developed a lossless communication protocol for controlling devices, and created a LabVIEW program to monitor and control the sub. It displays live video from the sub and can be controlled over a modified wireless XBOX controller. It plots it position on a map from data received from an on board accelerometer, as well as displaying speed, and of course acceleration. It uses pressure sensors (inside the sub) to monitor structural integrity and (outside the sub) to measure depth. It monitors temperature both inside and outside the sub. Inside in case their is overheating problems and outside for data collection.
This is just phase 1. I have already starting designing the phase 2 which will be upgrading the sub 2 16 bit controllers and add an advanced power management system. This will give me the power to program in much more autonomous features. I learned a lot doing this. This is my first project. Before this the only code I ever wrote was the type that would only update files or the display of a computer. There is something very exciting, at least for me, the first time you see your program actually interact with the real world. I did all this and this guy gets all kinds of credit for creating what could be called in comparison a steaming pile of
If I could get the kind of recognition for my project that this guy got for his project then there is a chance that someone out there would see the potential for what I would really like to see my toy evolve into. But, until then I am just some guy at some school that puts way to many hours in the lab.
Just FYI: What my vision would be for this long term would be an autonomous mini submarine that could reach the deepest regions of our planets oceans, while withstanding the extreme pressure, mapping uncharted regions of our planet. I have many of the requirements for just such an upgrade worked out but it would take a university willing to partner with someone like the DOD or some other branch of the military or government to fund it and get authorization for the required restricted components. For example, I would like to install a RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) which would require about 1 kg of 238pu (yes plutonium). But 238pu is completely useless in a weapon because if somehow fission did occur (very unlikely) a chain reaction could not be maintained. This would give my mini-sub ~100 watts of continuous power for nearly a decade. RTG does not use any active reaction like fission instead it draws electricity from heat of the natural decay of the radioactive material. This is just one of many ideas that I have. One of the most noteworthy is how to maintain structural integrity at pressures that would crush most man made objects. But, I'll keep that one to myself for now.
So, though I think what this guy has done is great and all and I am sure he learned a lot and he may have generated some interest in embedded systems but I think there are more deserving projects out there deserving of recognition. My project is one example I am sure there are many even more worthy than mine but I guess I am just confused as to who gets to decide what is worthy and what the criteria is. Is it just luck?
I doubt this will help
With just a little bit bigger budget one could build something that more approximated a real laptop.
There are plenty of 32 bit MCU (Microcontroller unit) with ALU (Arithmetic logic unit) that have a lot of bonus features built on the chip like: Ethernet, USB, LCD, etc.
Though, you also get some things you would not get with a general laptop like GP IO pins, pins that could detect if a device was on or not, these same pins could be used to activate/deactivate devices as well. Most would have several AD/DA (analog to digital and digital to analog conversion).
I have thought about putting something like this together but I wouldn't make it a laptop I would instead go for a hand held device. A portable data acquisition device.
Either way why reinvent the wheel there are plenty of embedded OS out there. I would go with an embedded Linux then development would be a breeze with a SSH daemon and GCC installed.
Put in a bluetooth chip, Edge, GMS/GPRS RF, and a touchscreen and I'll destroy iPhone *lol*...
Anyone out there that can program a GUI?? (please don't say X11 as IMHO it is why there are no good GUI on UNIX, except OS X (not X11 based)). -- forget this, it is a RANT all of it's own.
Anyways, it looks like his project was a lot of fun.. though with a little thought and bigger budget one could produce a much more powerful / practical device.
I was speaking with a good friend about the direction that both companies are taking. We agreed on some items and disagreed on others. But in general we both see dramatic flaws in the way both companies operate.
They are not in direct competition with each other as many would like to believe. Apple is a hardware company that gives it's operating system away to get consumers to buy their computers. Microsoft is a software company that relies on the abundance of cheap hardware producers so that it can sell their software.
Though with some of Apple's recent decisions this could be changing for them. Forcing Apple to compete in a software market and not depend on their inflated hardware prices to keep the profit margin high. This comes from Apple's decision to switch to Intel (an X86) platform. Though they are doing their very best to keep control of the hardware that "OS X" their flagship operating system that is given freely to entice consumer to buy their hardware. Even with Apple doing all they can to keep control of the platforms which their operating system runs on many people have been successful in loading and running OS X on non Apple hardware. Do a Google search on hackintosh and you will see what I mean.
It seems that Apple has lost touch with it's market. People are not switch from MS Windows to Apple. The biggest increase of people buying Apple equipment is not former PC owners but UNIX/Linux people that like the fact they get all the power of BSD and all the GUI love that OS X provides. A good example of what represents the current PC consumer is a person who was asking me advice about buying a new laptop. I first asked if they had thought about Apple? She immediately responded "NO, I don't want to learn something new". Even after telling her that the new Apple hardware could run both OS X and XP she just couldn't get over the fact that going Apple meant change. This and the fact that MacBooks start at $1099 and she priced out a pretty descent (not entry level) Dell laptop for $650 sealed the deal. While walking her through the Dell configuration screens (website) we came to the operating system section. She had the choice of 4 different versions of Windows Vista. I think most of you would have figured out, just from reading my post, that my friend is a novice when it comes to computers. But, she had been exposed to enough water cooler talk and bad press to come to her own conclusion that Vista was not ready yet, if it was every going to be "ready". Plus, she saw Vista having the same disadvantage as Apple does and that is change. For her to start using Vista means she is going to have to learn something new. For now she is putting off her laptop purchase. She wants to make sure that if she buys the Dell laptop, with the cheapest version of Vista, that she will be able to take her copy of XP and completely wipe it out and use what she knows.
This is how I see the average PC user. How many of them are watching those funny little commercials with the PC going in for major surgery while the Apple is being all super cool and think WOW I'll switch to Apple. I can't imagine that the numbers are very high. In comparison I have spoken with large numbers of Linux users getting an Apple because they love Unix but don't like any of the GUI alternatives. It's like there is to much versatility in what you can do. Yes, I can make a Linux desktop look and run like MS Windows XP or Apple OS X or anything I can imagine but the truth is I don't want to take the time to bother doing any of that. I just want my desktop to work so that I can be productive doing all the boring stuff people buy desktops for. So, what I would imagine makes up the largest growing Apple market is the computer savvy Unix advocate. So, what does Apple do? They make their OS run on X86 architecture. Now these would be Linux converts are either patching together their current PC into a hackintosh, building their own with hardware that is the most compatible with OS X (saving hundred of dollars in