Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Yet another one bites the dust

Back in mid-March, the third iPod that I owned began to fail. It was already the replacement for the replacement of the original one, which I purchased in October 2004. The device is the 20GB version of the fourth generation ‘Click Wheel’ iPod. I have rarely done anything wiser than buying the three year extended warranty. Now, the replacement that I got for the third iPod has itself failed: another toasted hard drive, ticking away and unable to be read or written to properly. Not even the program that is meant to restore it to factory settings will work. I suppose anything with moving parts is bound to fail sooner rather than later, but this is getting absurd. The fact that when they replace an iPod, they send you a refurbished one may explain why the failure rate on replacements is so high. Ironically, if the reliability of this iPod had been higher, I would probably be strongly considering buying a new one by now; since it has been so problematic, I am holding off and investigating other options.

People have frequently pointed out that my gadgets tend to fail surprisingly often. In response, I can offer some justifications:

  1. I have more gadgets than most people.
  2. In some cases, I have more finicky gadgets than other people.
  3. The gadgets I have, I use very often.
  4. The environments in which I live are wet.
  5. I am generally aware of exactly how the gadgets I use should work, and it catches my attention immediately when they do not do so.
  6. When I find a fault, I will almost always have it corrected – especially if the gear is under warranty.

While that does explain the frequency of dispatches, somewhat, it remains infuriating to live amidst a stream of little plastic boxes moving towards me and then away again by courier. As long as I have the real essentials: a computer, internet access, and a camera, I cannot really complain.

PS. My parents’ house is surrounded by weird wireless networks. At various times, we though they were coming from our own router, so we named and configured them all. Now there are always at least a couple of networks that look like they are ours, but where we cannot access the configuration page due to a password change. Why would people re-take the networks we accidentally configured, but then keep our esoteric names for them?

Radio communication

I have long found it surprising, and a bit unsettling, to think how many different overlapping radio signals there are surrounding and traversing us at all times. There are all the AM and FM radio stations, cell phones on different frequencies, communications from satellites, broadcast television, military and police radio frequencies, and miscellanous other signals such as aircraft transponders.

Most of that bandwidth is very inefficiently allocated, as with analog phones. Because frequencies have dedicated purposes that are not always being employed, there is a lot of bandwidth that is allocated but unused at any one time. The clever thing about more advanced systems like Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular phones is that they can use dynamically allocated frequency, and thus scale bandwidth according to need.

If we could do the same with some the the excellent bandwidth given over to television or military purposes, large scale wireless internet could come about rather more quickly and easily. Wireless internet, such as it exists now (the 802.1x standards) are located in a really undesirable part of the radio spectrum – hence problems with range and interference. As in so many other cases, the stumbling block is more regulatory than technological.

Thou shalt make backups: frequent and comprehensive

After considerable expenditure of energy, I now have a full duplicate backup of user data from the hard drive of my iBook. I also have no less than eight backups of everything really essential.

I am now… ready to upgrade to Tiger, the latest available version of Mac OS. I am also adding a 1GB stick of RAM to replace the 256 meg extra stick that Apple charged me so much for when I first paid for this computer. I need the extra memory for Photoshop and iPhoto.

Both the Tiger upgrade and the extra RAM will be part of my Vancouver homecoming. It puts my mind at ease to know how many different places academically essential files now reside.

A pocket protector too far

If you have ever felt the urge to take your geek tendencies and just run with them – much like how Macbeth did with his thirst for power – I recommend becoming embroiled in the controversy about the hypothetical atmospheric and biological consequences of a fictional explosion in a film starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher – who I prefer to remember as the bazooka-wielding assasin from The Blues Brothers.

Would the destruction of the second Death Star in The Return of the Jedi have inevitably annihalated the ewok race that aids the rebel commando team? Some people say yes. Others say no.

They all have way, way too much time on their hands. The same is true of these people, but at least they have provided me with considerable amusement over the years. Their reviews (1, 2) of recent Star Wars films definitely lay to rest the idea that they could possible be considered consistent or accurate.

This whole discussion was promted by a post on MetaFilter, which I can thank Nick Ellan for addicting me to years ago.

Back to the moon? But why?

Apparently, Lockheed-Martin got the contract to serve as prime contractor for a return to the moon, and possibly further travel from there to Mars. Now, when I first heard the ‘back to the moon’ proposal, I assumed it was electoral fluff. How can an agency that decided to scrap such a useful piece of scientific equipment as the Hubble Space Telescope possibly be considering the scientifically pointless mission of putting human beings back on the moon?

I believe that humanity will eventually expand outwards into space. It is advisable due to the small but catastrophic risk of asteroid or comet impact, as well as generally in keeping with an agenda of exploration that I find personally inspiring. The first moon landings were an astonishing demonstration of human ingenuity and American technical and economic might. With present technology, manned spaceflight is a symbolic and political endeavour, not a scientific one. That said, returning to the moon serves no purpose, scientific or political. If we could do it in the 1960s, we can do it again now. Even if you accept the argument that a moon base is necessary for a manned mission to Mars, the enormous question remains of why we should take on such an expedition at this time, with this technology, and the present financial circumstances of the United States.

When it comes to space science, people are very expensive and delicate instruments. Robots might not always work (note all the failed Mars landers), but they don’t require all the food, air, space, and temperature and acceleration control that people do. The things we hope to learn about our solar system and the space beyond are almost certainly better investigated by robots, at this time. And the moon is hardly a profitable place to go looking for new scientific insights. A robot sent somewhere interesting – like Europa – would almost certainly advance science more than sending scores of people to that great airless ball that lights up our night sky and causes our tides.

This plan is especially absurd given the magnitude of public debt in the United States right now. The existing level of federal debt is more than $8.5 trillion, more than $28,000 per person, and the federal budget is sharply in deficit. If we could choose to send people to the moon instead of developing one of the two hugely expensive fighter jets now being rolled out (the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter, a $256 billion program), I would be all for it. At least, going back to the moon would do relatively little harm (wasted resources aside). Of course, no such trade-off is being offered. This would be spending over and above the sums already being expended on pricey little projects like the JSF, the DDX destroyer (about $4 billion per ship), and the war in Iraq (more than $300 billion, so far). The comparison to military hardware is a sensible one, since manned spaceflight is, to a large extent, just another massive subsidy to the military aerospace industry. Hopefully, the passing of the mid-term elections will put this white elephant to sleep again.

Related items:

On digitized books

For years, Project Gutenberg and related endeavours have been seeking to produce digital copies of books that are no longer under copyright. The Gutenberg people have already digitized 17,000. Purposes for doing so include making machine-readable copies available for those with disabilities, allowing for their use with e-book readers, and even in more creative applications – like printing books onto scarves, so that you can read them on flights from the UK to the United States.

In the grand tradition of huge companies incorporating the results of smaller enterprises, many (if not all) of the Gutenberg books are now available through Google Book Search. Figuring out which Jane Austen book a particular passage stuck in your memory is from has thus become a far simpler task. For years, I have been using The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, provided by MIT, to search through plays.

Admittedly, not many people want to sit in front of a monitor to read an entire book. With the development of electronic paper that has high resolution, high contrast, and no requirement for power consumption while displaying static information, perhaps this will all become a whole lot more useful.

On being a cyborg

Today’s bi-hourly deluges precipitated the purchase of an umbrella: not for my own sake, but on account of the constellation of electronic gadgets that now follow me about as I walk a broken bicycle to Cowley, or carry groceries back from Sainsbury’s to Church Walk.

There is a lot of talk these days about combining all the gizmos a person is likely to carry around into one all-purpose device. Sometimes, people term this amalgamation an ‘iPod killer.’ Personally, I don’t think it will ever fly, except with the nerdiest of the nerds. As it stands, there is a very solid chance that at least one among my digital camera, music player, or mobile phone will be broken at any particular time. If I had to mail all three to Stoke-on-Trent for three weeks every time one failed, I would soon be living a quiet and pictureless life.

Moreover, all three devices are designed to become obsolete as quickly as possible. Or, at least obsolete enough to make you buy a snazzier new model. Given that the development cycles in telephones, cameras, and music players are unlikely to sync up, you are assured of either having at least one device well behind the times, or being bankrupted by the need to constantly upgrade your all-singing whatsit.

Really, I do my mobile phone an injustice in lumping it together with the sometimes problematic camera and perpetually fault-prone iPod. Since Claire gave it to me, I haven’t had the slightest difficulty with it. Some might consider it a staid sort of item, with capabilities that do not extend beyond sending text messages and making the very occasional telephone call, but perhaps therein lies the secret of its durability. In contrast to my Palm Pilot – which is languishing in a box in Vancouver, bedeviled by problems of all varieties – my Moleskine paper-based day planner has performed flawlessly since purchased.

Skiing, Yetis, and Windows 3.1

Being a fairly computer-friendly crew, I am sure many readers will remember the venerable Windows 3.1 operating system. Many will also be likely to remember the greatest game ever produced for that OS: SkiFree, created by Chris Pirih. The game was notable not for graphics or gameplay (your little sprite would descend ski tracks of various varieties, avoiding obstacles) but because of how it ended. Without fail or exception, the player would always be devoured by a yeti after skiing far enough.

Now, the video game that cannot be won has a long history. There is no beating Tetris – only delaying failure – and the same is true for an enormous number of relatively simple games, which generally become faster and more difficult as they progress. The most addictive contemporary example is probably Bejeweled. The choice to end SkiFree through the fangorious devouring of the player was a particularly bold and, dare I say, brilliant move. Indeed, it is the only reason I have the slightest recollection of having played it.

My experience with this game may also partly explain why I continue to find Yetis such amusing creatures.

Major vulnerability of mechanical locks

Open pin and tumbler lock, from Wikimedia

To those who retain faith in mechanical pin and tumbler locks, a bit of information on the bump key as a means of picking them may unsettle you. It’s a hot topic on many of the news aggregation sites online at the moment (Metafilter and Engadget 1 and 2, for instance), but those who don’t frequent such sites may find it helpful to know. Perhaps the biggest issue is that this technique does not produce signs of forced entry, which may cause problems when making insurance claims.

This Dutch television segment shows how absurdly easy it is to open even quite expensive locks using a key cut in a particular way, an object to whack it with, and no skill whatsoever. Definitely enough to make a person fearful for their laptop, music equipment, etc. That is especially true in an area that has as high a burglary rate as North Oxford. Just last night, Emily saw someone trying to get into her flat. Thankfully, the front door of our flat uses horizontally-oriented “dimple” keys (Mul-T-Lock brand), that are somewhat less vulnerable to this attack (see the last PDF linked at the bottom of this post). Even so, our internal doors, as well as basically all the ones in Wadham College, use the pin and tumbler design vulnerable to bumping. Here is another video on how to make and use a bump-key. Apparantly, anyone with a file, a reasonably steady hand, and a bit of time can make their own.

The alternatives generally advanced to get around such vulnerabilities are other sorts of mechanical locks, electronic access control systems, or systems that use both mechanical and electronic elements (a system used increasingly often in cars). While they do have problems of their own, electronic access control systems do have many appealing features. In particular, if one were to use low-cost RFID tags or simple swipe-cards with a pre-set code as an authentication token, it would be easy to maintain a database of allowed and disallowed keys. If you lost your keys, you could disable that one and issue yourself a new one. Likewise, temporary keys could be issued to people, and restrictions could be placed upon the hours at which certain keys could be used. Features like these are what make keycard based systems so appealing, as well as common in commercial settings.

The first downside of such conversion is cost: replacing locks is expensive. Secondly, such systems are open to other kinds of attacks that people may not understand as easily. Thirdly, if an electronic lock fails in a profound way (no longer responds to authentication tokens), you have little choice but to break down the door or saw through the frame and bolt. Once again, the nature of security as a perpetual trade-off is demonstrated.

More detailed information (PDF) on key bumping is available from Security.org. Also, from The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL) (PDF).