richardcampbell

A/C, D/C, and USB

I've been arguing for years that DC power distrubution in data centers, trading floors, and homes should be the new standard. As the argument usually falls on inebriated ears who'd rather be watching the baseball game, I can't claim to be much of an influence. But there's been more discussion amongst people who actually know what they are talking about, see Wired's article, and from the Data Center Knowledge cite. Some reasons: up to 15% energy saving, fewer points of failure, less cooling.

Meanwhile, at the home and desktop level, rather than have myriad bulky ac-to-dc converter bricks stuck on to your power outlets, why not just have DC power distributed to USB outlets? Right now, there are multiple manufacturers that provide outlets with built-in converters: CurrentWerks, NewerTechnology, Fastmac, and Rolodex. Not a bad answer, certainly an interesting option for new building or renovations.

RIPs

Allow me to get on the brush-with-late-greatness bandwagon. One thing I found interesting about Dennis Ritchie was that he actually attended the old Usenix conferences (which I understand is actually still in business). Just odd, because few of the original Bell Labs guys attended. And, I mingled with him at an open-bar. No recollection of the conversation.

Meanwhile, while working at CITI, we had an infatuation with Apple Computer, Inc. I actually went out for a couple days team discussion to talk about A/UX. That was an aborted attempt to port the original MacOS to a UNIX platform (about 1988/9, whilst Steve Jobs was not at Apple). But I was at the unveiling of the NeXT computer, where one of the hightlights was that the cable connecting the monitor carried both the video and power supply (hence only one cable). And then, I was in the front row of the luncheon the next day, where Jobs was again extolling the virtues of the writeable CD caddy that was, for him, a big selling point of the system. Students could carry their data around in their shirt pocket. Except that I was close enough to see that Jobs' shirts (he had not yet switched to turtlenecks) had been custom tailored with extra-large pockets big enough to hold that CD caddy. One insight into his fetish for fashion over technology, and sometimes, over useability.

UpUrl - chrome extension

I've written a small Google chrome extension - "upurl". The idea is that often after getting in to the depths of some website, or after using a search engine, it is not always trivial to navigate back up the URL path. It's often hard just to find the homepage link for some sites. This extension puts up a little icon that when clicked shows the hierarchy of slash-separated URLs based on the current tab. It's not on the official extension page yet, it's only is double secret stealth beta release (and Chrome only) at http://www.netrc.com/upurl.crx

Just a small item

A small item, which begging your pardon, concerns me and Managing AFS: The Andrew File System. Regarding the origins of the term "cloud" computing, if I wrote this in 1996 (and finally got the book out in 1998), the terms were certainly in common use by (at least) the AFS community:

Depicting AFS as a file system cloud demonstrates the ubiquity of the system and the simplicity of connecting to the service. Perhaps a better analogy would be to a consumer utility provider - the water supply or the electric company. After a single hookup is made, services are constant, reliable, and affordable. As with telephone services, you simply expect that a single phone line will be able to connect you to any other phone in the world. AFS is like that; the worldwide community of AFS sites shares files without any special browsers or other applications. As far as they are concerned, "No matter where you go, there you are."

why five

Back at the 1990 Winter Usenix conference (so long ago there are only a few traces of it on the web) a fellow from NASA talked about their uses of computers over the years. One war story told of how the "5" button in the middle of the main controller(a numeric keypad) got worn off due to hitting it so many times during the Apollo missions -it was the 'reset' button to clear out buggy software.

Another story I've always remembered explained why there are five flight control computers on the U.S. Space Shuttle. Basically, you need a computer to fly the spaceship due to hypersinic aerodynamics. But...

...you can't have one computer, because it could fail

...you can't have two, because they may give different results

...you need three to be able to break a tie, but if one failed you'd have two which is no good

...so you need four computers to be doubly redundant against failures and still have a quorum for voting.

...So why five? Well, what if all four fail? You have to pre-load one more computer with the software to land the shuttle, and then you keep it frozen, turned off until an emergency forces you to use it.

And that's why the shuttle has five flight control computers.

I found a link the other day, related to the last voyage of Discovery, which pretty much backs up my recollection of the story: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_shuttlecomputers.html . Note this quote from the article: it has been 24 years since the last time a software problem required an on-orbit fix during a mission . !

4A

My brand new copy of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4A, "Combinatorial Algorithms, Part1" just arrived. Wow. As with 1, 2, and 3, way too much information. And, as always, a fantastic layout. I recall going to one of his lectures back in Ann Arbor, where he rambled on about a visualprocessing algorithm he was working on. Fascinating, arcane, and good humored. Thanks Don!

and don't forget, most books, films, music mentioned in this blog can be accessed through my amazon web store shown in the left nav column

Blockheads

Finally figured out that Adblock is blocking my Amazon bookstore and in-line ads. Just FYI.... You can of course do your own surfing to any bookstore you like, but there are links here that work in all the browsers. If you don't seem them, check out your ad blocking plugins.

Nanotech

I would assume that we're all hip to the nanotech future? There's still a big gap between now and this, but even the intermediate future will be very, very cool. Talk about "change"!

New Tech News

Some news: I've been trying to get some sort of media server set up to our living room interfaces (the big TV/home-theater thing) but having little luck in finding a reasonably priced general server. It's pretty easy getting music over to the receiver, but what about Picasa images? What about podcasts of various formats? What about youtube? Hulu video/movies? What about the web? Yes, the web - why can't I display my calendar or travel info without crowding people into the small office?

Of course, my Time-Warner cable box is Linux-based, but closed to hacks. My answer to all this was to get a Mac Mini. It's now setup, wirelessly connected to the office server, etc. While the user interface is confusing :-), the functionality is all there. I've even programmed the new remote control to manage the Mac iLife application.

In other news, I've upgraded to the Treo 755p with EV-DO access. I'm still impressed at the Palm interface (even more so than the Mac). I've had an ever expanding Palm contact list and calendar from about 1996, and every new Palm I've moved to has just sync'd and managed that data transfer and application re-installs seamlessly.

A/C-D/C-A/C-D/C

letter to the editors of the IEEE Spectrum...

Can there be any more absurd idea to be displayed in IEEE Spectrum than the Coleman "Powerworks" power inverter for cars (Resources, Nov 2007)?? Granted, there are by now myriad devices accompanying our auto trips which require electrical support. But there's something drastically wrong with this picture - the engine's alternator generates A/C, that's converted to DC to recharge the battery and is distributed to a cigarette lighter -- a cigarette lighter -- into which we're supposed to insert a cigar-shaped plug to send DC power to an A/C inverter into which we plug our laptops DC power converter. That doesn't seem like sound engineering - it's more like Edison and Tesla are still fighting it out in the backseat of my car.

What's wrong with a simple DC distribution network in our cars, with standard, simple, small, purpose-built DC plugs, into which we can directly plug laptops, music players, GPS units, cell phones, DVD players, tablet PCs, and PDAs?

We've pretty much banned cigarette smoking in cars anyway; why not get rid of this vestigal infernal hack and put in place a professionally engineered electical system? That sounds like a job for the IEEE.

(and then we can put the same thing under my desk!)

Computer Humor

Herewith, a short overview of the olden days in computer industry advertising. Compu-Promo from James Lileks....And yes, it does occur to me that I find this all more amusing than most civilians.

Literature(?)

I've written a book, have you? Now you can, and you can even get a far better royalty than most published authors - See Lulu to publish your book yourself. Looks like a great way to see your prose (or poetry) in polished, printed form.

And for UNIX-philes, they even have the Lions' Commentary on UNIX book available.

toodledo

Still trying to keep track of things todo. I use ListPro on my Palm, which is nice for general lists as well as important stats (e.g. WorldSeries). Each list can have lots of fields, and it has a good PC interface which, of course, syncs betwixt the Palm<->PC. But there's no online-web-AJAXy thing. For the web version, I've stumbled on ToodleDo . Very nice, modern interface, easy to use. Etc. Conceivably I could use my Palm to browse/edit this. Let me know what you think.

Windows Live?

Microsoft announces a new product, and, like an idiot, I run off and install it. Windows Live is a local app designed to make publishing easier. We'll see....it seems to have discovered automagically that I'm using MovableType; ahhh, and it even found the 'categories' I've set up. Next stop, reviews on my todo list: Superman Returns (thumbs up), The Breakup (thumbs horizontal), and others.

update: wow, when software works, it's neato.

Why We Like SUNW

Radia Perlman, "mother-of-the-internet", works there:

---

Radia: Mother of the Internet. That’s kind of a strange marketing sound bite. I cringe when people emphasize my gender, because it's really a very small part of my life, especially my professional life. Recently a recruiter for a company sent me e-mail saying "We are particularly interested in you as a female thought leader." I didn't reply, because I wasn't interested in a job, but I fantasized replying: "Thank you for your interest. Although my credentials as a thought leader are impeccable, I must warn you that I am not that qualified as a female. I can't walk in heels, I have no clothing sense, and I'm not particularly decorative. What aspects of being female are important for this position?"

---

A neat interview. Read through to the end -- e.g., she knows that TCP/IP isn't the be-all of protocols.....

VoIP

My home phone has been ported to VoIP. We beta-tested Voicepulse for about three months; everything went fine, so we put in to have the port done. Any calls to our home number will now be digitized, packetized, fragmented, routed, and then reassembled automagically. Or so they say.

Let me know if you sense any problems with your calls. Of course, if IP traffic is really broken, you better send complaints via snail-mail.

Update:

20 Feb 2006 - a few hour outage for incoming calls. Outgoing calls unaffected. Customer support was pretty quick about this, buy saying only that the problem was with their "upstream service provider".

Apologies...hard drive failure

Sorry about the absence. My hard drive failed and needed a complete reinstall. The important application data I had saved to CD, but I never made a system backup and, after the renovation, I had mislaid my system disks. However, the whole refit was pretty simple -- I had the help of Brian from PC Joe who diagnosed the problem, determined that the disk drive would require a clean-room operation costing $1000s, and instead just put a new system disk together.

(Actually, the reason I haven't posted is that I've just been lazy)

Attacked!

Over the past week my PC has been hit hard by spyware and the Sasser virus.

Spyware is either cookies or executable code which "enhances" ones browsing experience. In my case, this included changing my toolbars, intercepting Google queries, and adding extra links to pages (e.g. "car" and "loan" linked to advertisers).

Some of this spyware was particularly vicious. Certain executables really messed up accessing the net -- even trying to find spyware antidotes. I finally picked up Spy Sweeper and that was able to fix most of the damage. Even so, registry keys from ipend have been difficult to get rid of.

Among the nasty stuff was adware from:

• Lycos Sidesearch
• ClientMan - odysseusmarketing

Then, Monday evening, I was hit with the Sasser virus. Windows unhelpfully kept informing me that the lsass.exe exited and that therefore a reboot was necessary. Luckily, after a few reboots I was able to get the antidote.

Useful tools:

• Spy Sweeper, a couple bucks but nice interface.....
• Hijack This, very fast, displays odd registry/misc entries. You decide what to keep/delete. free. Web site has good info
• Eric Howe's Privacy Info , good treatment of issues, software, etc.

DVR != HDTV

A quick note: I'm told that the new Time-Warner DVR is not capable of delivering HDTV output, for those few channels which have that today. Seems like quite an oversight. I'll have to decide which is more important, time-shifting Letterman, HDTV Leno, or several more set-top boxes to do both.

Icons

I've finally fixed the icons. If you're interested, some were found at Icon Archive

Icons Tree looks good too.

And Icon Town is over the top.

DVR

Just replace my old-fashioned digital cable box with a DVR - a tivo-like recordable cable box. Has all the old functions (video-on-demand, etc) plus the ability to record up to 30 hours of video on an internal hard-drive.

So far, thumbs up. I got home with it, plugged it in, turned it on, started
watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" -- and hit the record button.
No troubles, I can now watch that classic cartoon as much as I want.

Next, I went to the normal on-screen program guide, scrolled over to 11:30pm, selected "Late Night With David Letterman", and hit the record button. Up pops a window to ask if I want to record the one show or, the option I was looking for, the entire series. Next morning, the show is there for me to watch.

Watching is easy: Hit the "List" button and up pops a menu of all the recorded shows. Select one and watch.

Downside: the response time from the cable box is quite a bit slower than with the previous digital cable box (which was slower than the previous analog box).
As the system is (I think) constantly decoding the video stream and preparing to write the stream to disk in case you want to "pause" live TV, then switching channels takes more time. Must learn to be more patient....

more to come.