End of November Random Links

A good site to find out what the rest of the networking industry is doing for operational best practices:

IP Best Current Operation Practices

Interesting piece on 21st century computer architecture from the  Computing Community Consortium (CCC). Direct pdf link to the white paper:

21st Century Computer Architecture 

GPS based NTP server

Inexpensive, small form factor NTP server with GPS receiver: NetBurner's PK70

Also useful for an embedded system or where a small machine is needed.

Doing a background check on yourself

The Consumerist has a good collection of links on how to run a background check on yourself.
The usual suspects are there, the three credit reporting agencies.  There are also a number of surprising places where information about your is warehoused, such as :

• The Retail Exchange (tracks your return activity with retailers)
• A number of sites keeping employment history
• A number of sites keeping tenant history 

someone is always watching

Submarine Cable map

A comprehensive inventory of undersea cables: Submarine Cable Almanac.  Its a 40M .pdf

Telecom dictionary

A bit dated, but still useful, this Federal Standard is one of the most comprehensive dictionary of telecommunications terms I've seen.

tcpdump & tee

This is something I always forget how to do: run a tcpdump while both looking at the packets AND writing them to a file at the same time.  I always remember it involves 'tee', but never the exact syntax.  So, here is the command:

tcpdump -i eth1 -U -w - | tee dump.pcap | tcpdump -n -r -

This will listen:

• listen on eth1 (-i eth1)
• Don't wait until the output buffer fills before writing packets (-U)
• Write packets to STDOUT (-w -)
• Read from STDIN write to file and write to STDOUT (
  tee dump.pcap)
• Read packets from STDIN (and don't resolve names) (tcpdump -n -r -)

Pure Evil, but genius: 802.1X by-pass

Pwnie Express device also works in networks "protected" with 802.1X on wired ports.  It doesn't completely invalidate 802.1X port security.  As the saying goes--- if you have physical access to a device, it is insecure.  It's still a good way around 802.1X

Some Random links for Oct 22

AceHackware is a place to buy hacker stuff- everything from USB keyloggers to lock picking equipment.

DARPA announces a plan to support software defined radio.  Currently, most radios are hardware specific for the particular band being used, which means you need a lot of hardware to cover a lot of the spectrum.  Software defined radios do exist, but this project will bring down the price to around $200.

Dangerous times for free speech

Two disturbing articles on the future of freedom of expression.  First, the Saudi government is proposing an international body for network censorship.   

The Washington Post has an OpEd on this topic with the following quote:

Our entire society is being treated as a crowded theater, and talking about whole subjects is now akin to shouting “fire!”

Countries which we have assumed to be historically free either are not free, or are curtailing that freedom.  According to the Post piece, Ireland finds it self in good company with Russia in criminalizing speech that offends the religious.  

Awesome dumplings in San Francisco

Shanghai Dumpling King in San Francisco is definitely worth the trip out of the downtown area/financial district.  Located at 3319 Balboa Street San Francisco, CA 94121, it's a cash only joint, but again, well worth it.

Putty Connection Manager

Putty Connection Manager was a great little wrapper around putty that allowed for tabbed use multiple ssh sessions, as well as sending commands to multiple sessions.  Too bad the site went missing.  It was a great program, with a few annoyances (especially failure to properly focus when switching between applications).

Enter supperputty.  It's an active project hosted on google.  Looks a lot like PuttyCM, and can import PuttyCM databases.  While it isn't as polished as PuttyCM yet, it doesn't suffer from the same focusing problem (which is something that drove me nuts).

The Tree of Life for Computers

Computer Chronology: 50-Year Micro List, 1938-1988 referencing ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS WITHIN THE ORDNANCE CORPS has this excellent image of a Tree of Life for computers:

Analog Computer

Not sure exactly what this can be used for, but PERTECS is a software simulation of an analog computer.

untitled

RIPE IPv6 Requirements document

Great document detailing things to include in an RFP for IT gear to ensure IPv6 support

Controlling the Internet

The folks over at Harvard have analyzed routing data to determine how easy or hard it is for a country to control internet traffic.

Mapping local control of the Internet

Solar Eclipses until 2012

World map of solar eclipses for the next 7 1/2 years

With any luck, this will help take pictures like these:

Couple of threads from reddit where I got these photos:
Windmills

Annular Eclipse

Couple of Quotes from "Turings Cathedral"

Despite the title, Turing's Cathedral, by George Dyson, isn't primarily about Alan Turing.  Rather, it focuses on John von Neumann, another giant in computer history.  A couple of interesting quotes:

The speed of fiber deployment

Thirty years ago, networks developed for communication between people were adapted to communication between machines.  We went from transmitting data over a voice network to transmitting voice over a data network in just a few short years.  Billions of dollars were sunk into cables spanning six continents and three oceans, and a web of optical fiber engulfed the world.  When the operation peaked in 1991, fiber was being rolled out, globally, at over 5,000 miles per hour, or nine times the speed of sound: Mach 9.  (emphasis added).

Global computing efficiency

Among the computers populating this network, most processing cycles are going to waste.  Most processors, most of the time, are waiting for instructions.  Even within an active processor, as Bigelow explained, most computational elements are waiting around for something to do next.  The global computer, for all its powers, is perhaps the least efficient machine that humans have ever built.  (emphasis added)

Given how power hungry data centers are, this is a sobering number.

Two Beautiful Pictures of Glastonbury

Glastonbury, England, and specifically, the abbey there, claims to be the burial place of King Arthur. 
Believe what you will, but these are two beautiful pictures of the ruins there

 

More on the Analytical Engine

As a follow up to this post about the Babbage Analytical Engine, here is an article and TEDx video about the project to finally build this master piece.

Another article on the same topic.

There have been proposals to emulate or simulate the logic of the Analytical Engine in either an FPGA or even in micro-scale components.  All worthy causes.

Another Beginning of Infinity quote

As a follow on to this blog post, here is another quote from The Beginning of Infinity:

Biological evolution was merely a finite preface to the main story of evolution, the unbounded evolution of memes.

As, like the first quote, this one got me thinking.  First, a definition of meme: a meme is a item of culture that is passed from person to person, group to group, society to society, generation to generation.  Memes can be jokes, ideas, conventions, cultural behavior, etc.  The term was first used by Richard Dawkins in the 1976 book The Selfish Gene, though the concept predates that.


The concept is that memes encode ideas and knowledge (something David Deutsch stresses throughout the chapter "The Evolution of Culture"), and like their DNA counterparts, memes can change, ie evolve. And they evolve much faster than genes.  Some memes such as social norms may evolve on the scale of a normal lifetime, other memes (especially internet memes) may evolve of the course of days, if not hours.

The question of 'are humans still evolving' is being debated (this article seems to indicate that there is evidence of human evolution as late as the 19th century).  While this is an interesting question, I'm not sure it is an important one.  Knowledge transmission via DNA is no longer the main method of human evolution, rather, it is via memes: a much faster, more flexible method of transmitting information.

DNA is method of creating knowledge and transmitting it to the future, while on the one hand very flexible (the variety of life on this planet is simply amazing), on the other, it is inflexible in that it is undirected and slow.  The 'knowledge' stored in DNA describes an organism, that is, in theory well suited to a specific environment, in order to replicate the DNA itself.  However, that knowledge may be out of date if the environment changes

 

So, over the course of millions of years, chemical knowledge, storage, and transmission has lead to an organism that is capable of a different type of information storage and transmission- culture, education, writing systems, etc.  Now, this organism has embarked on another level of abstraction: digital information processing.  Vernor Vinge has an essay well worth reading, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" The abstract from this essay:

                     Within thirty years, we will have the technological
              means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,
              the human era will be ended.

                   Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
              events be guided so that we may survive?  These questions
              are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
              dangers) are presented.

Are we at an inflection point, as Vernor Vinge suggests?  For millions of years, information was stored and transmitted in chemical units, genes.  These genes created an organism that, for the first time, has overcome the limitations of chemical storage.  We are capable of creating, changing, and transmitting knowledge independent of the slower, more rigid chemical means.  In fact, we are even communicating (both intentionally and unintentionally) with Deep Time.

It took millions of years to make the jump from chemical to cultural evolution.  Will we ever make the jump from cultural to silicon based digital evolution?  I don't know if we'll ever make a self-aware artificial life form, something that can pass the Turning Test, but I'm fairly certain we'll be able to make 'things' that can independently create, improve, store, and transmit knowledge.

Hakkōda Mountains

Rumor has it that this is a hidden gem for deep powder.  The Hakkōda Mountains are in the Aomori Prefecture of Northeastern Japan.

photo from aotown's Panoramio page

Visually Documenting the Space Shuttle Program

Apologies if this is a re-post, but I couldn't find it in my history.  This is a video put together by the folks who are responsible for documenting the space shuttle program.  Not only does the video contain amazing still & moving pictures, but these guys go into detail on how they are able to get such amazing shots.
This is well worth the full 45 minutes, especially in HD

Geeks rule!

When faced with a typical childhood problem (toys that don't work as designed or work with each other), this dad fixed the problem by building a 3-D printer.  The result: a universal connection kit which allows toys of all sorts to work together.  Long live geeks & problem solvers!

AT&T Femtocell security

The folks over at fail0verflow :: havea great article on the internals and security of an AT&T femtocell.  Time to check eBay to see if I'm getting a new toy!

Why does Java suck so much?

I know, a rhetorical question.  But how did this ever make it out of the role of playing games on cell phones?

53Kb of Memory

Science historian George Dyson, has a typically insightful piece on the fundamental nature of the internet.  Titled "A Universe of Self-replicating code," he draws parallels between the Big Bang birth of of the universe and the birth of the internet.
Definitely a worthy ready, but the quote that sticks in my mind:

One number that's interesting, and easy to remember, was in the year 1953, there were 53 kilobytes of high-speed memory on planet earth.

In George Dyson's book Turing's Cathedral, the fact is repeated with a reference:

In March of 1953, there were 53 kilobytes of high-speed random access memory on planet Earth.

The reference points to  a book by the US Office of Naval Research: A Survey of Automatic Digital Computers.


update:
After trying to find an online version of A Survey of Automatic Digital Computers, I came across this blog entry (by the author of Geek Atlas) which refutes the claim.

"Error Correction is the Beginning of Infinity"

Reading The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch and came across this thought provoking quote.  The author is comparing analog and digital computers and is explaining that analog computers could never be the universal machines that digital computers have become.
 
Analog computers represent information as continuous values (think slide rule), while digital computers represent information as discrete values (think calculator).  During calculations with analog computers, external factors (such as thermal fluctuations, electrical noise, etc) can lead to the accumulation of errors, limiting the use of an analog computer.  Error correction in digital computers ensures the integrity of information throughout the calculation.  Because of this, digital computers can be used for universal computation, therefore, this represents (among other examples in the book) the beginning of infinity.

Calendar simplicity = Calendar beauty

French design company has a simple way to track days of the month: Monthly Measure.  Something about the simplicity makes this appealing:

A wooden rule with 31 'day' notches and a metal cog with the days of the week (one side English, one side French). 

Talk Talk Book

One of the most under rated bands of all times, Talk Talk (and the Wikipedia entry for the band), also had some of the best album art work ever.  James Marsh is working on a book, The Spririt of Talk Talk which will include some of his awesome artwork along with some photos and handwritten lyrics from Mark Hollis.  Can't wait...supposed to be published this spring.







In the meantime, enjoy one of the more obscure songs from the band:

The artwork for this video is called "Kill Not the Goose."

Doomsday dashboard

National Geographic has aninteresting dashboard: they are mining Twitter to determine what people think will be our ultimate demise.

Online Circuit Design

Something to check out when I get a free minute: an online circuit design studio for building and sharing (simple) schematics.  Check out CircuitLab

Undersea Cablemaps

Two sites for submarine cable maps:
From Telegeography: Submaprine Cable Map
Flash based map from Tata, doesn't look like as complete as the above, but also includes terrestrial locations

Cartoon Characters with a Middle Initial 'J'

In an apparent long running tribute to Jay Ward, master of such cartoons as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and Dudley Do-Right, many cartoon characters have the middle initial 'J.'  Below is a list:

Rocket J Squirrel
Bullwinkle J Moose
Phineas J. Whoopee
Michigan J Frog
Elmer J Fudd
Bartholomew J Simpson
Homer J Simpson
Philip J Fry
Professor Hubert J Farnsworth

Use a Firefox plugin to appear to be somewhere else

Firefox plugin to obfuscate your IP in logs

Cool optical illusion

Enjoy!

A map of logical fallicies

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html

Corporate control - how sad

Popular TV show Mythbusters had planned on doing a show dedicated to RFID.  In fact, at some point, Kari Byron had an RFID capsule implanted in her arm to test how it would act during an MRI scan.
The team had planned on doing additional work on RFIDs to test the reliability, trackability, and hackability.  Unfortunately, major credit card companies decided it was best to suppress such investigation.

Stirling Engine to the rescue

Because NASA is running out of Plutonium-238, a new method of power generation must be found.  Enter a 200-year old design: the Stirling Engine.  With this design, engineers are about to increase efficiency of this dwindling fuel.  Granted it isn't exactly like the one pictured below, it's still cool to see this type of design being used

Performance Curve Database

Need data showing how the performance of something has changed over time?  Head over to the the Santa Fe Institute's Perforance Curve Database site that has graphs and data describing such things as the historical performance of photovoltaic cells (think efficiency,  cost per watt, etc).
Below is the graph of Hard Drive storage over time

Mushrooms for landfills

Gizmodo has an interesting article about a mushroom that can exist soley on polyurethane, and live without oxygen (it's anaerobic). Might we finally be able to digest the indestructible plastic we've made?

Northern Lights in Finland

Glass igloos in Finland to watch the northern lights

More Common Sense

Thomas Paine has so many great quotes

Urban planners and developers inhabit fictional world

From Neal Stephenson's Anathem, evidence that the same crappy urban planners and designers that build suburban communities have infected the fictional world of Abre:

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new markget devoted to selling T-shirts, and other objects with pictures of the old market.  Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

I'm guessing James Howard Kunstler, author of such great books such as Home From Nowhere and The Goegraphy of Nowhere would probably agree.

New Toy

New toy arrived last night from Adafruit:

 There will be much LED blinking over this long weekend!

Doomsday clock

Just submitted this to /.
Let's see if it gets approved


The recent front page posting "The Doomsday Clock Is Moved Closer To Midnight" got me wondering, Do we need a Doomsday Clock for the Internet?

With the US seriously considering the draconian intellectual property protection measures such as SOPA and PIPA, as well as the US pressuring Spain to pass similar legislation, threats to online freedom are serious and impending.

China has its 'Great Firewall' and Egypt (among others) has disabled cell phone service during turbulent times. Let's not forget that ACTA was negotiated in secret.

Things have gotten so bad that the German hacker space shackspace is considering launching its own satellites to combat such censorship. Even Australia has been in the news with internet blacklisting

The internet was mostly ignored in its early days by big corporations and some governments; it now seems under a microscope. So, do we need a doomsday clock? And if so, who is the time keeper?

Two sad stories on the political front

Techdirt is reporting the obvious: big media is ignoring the SOPA/PIPA controversy.  The implication is that the self interest is preventing coverage. The big media conglomerates have a strong self-interest in ensuring the government protects their intellectual property.  Individual freedoms be damned!

It's sad when outsiders point out how large segments of the population, and the candidates they are selecting to run for president, choose ignorance over science.  But that is just what the folks over at The Telegraph have done in this article about the Republican primary process.

Power Connectors

Useful post about the different power connectors you might run into in the IT (and other) world.

Sky Conditions

Great resource for forecasting sky conditions in many areas: Clear Sky aggregates charts from observatories around the world and creates charts predicting viewing conditions.

Has it come to this?

German hackerspace shack (Stutgart Hackerspace) has proposed putting its own satellites in space in order to maintain a free an open internet. 

Think it's crazy?  Spain just passed the Sinde Law, an onerous attempt to protect private IP rights holders.  Luckily, the tide seems to be turning on the US's similar effort, SOPA.

With western countries following China's lead on restricting the open internet, it's no wonder individuals will need to launch private satellites.

Fools, Fanatics, and the Wise