Philosophy

Based on this XKCD comic:

He states that starting with any topic you can think of on Wikipedia, and click the first link that is not in italices or brackets, and it will lead to "philosophy". It is pretty amusing in that the first 2 things I tried did work. As amazing as it seems, it really has a simple explanation. The first sentence in any article will be a generalized summary of whatever the topic is. On average, any word in said description will be a term more general than the article itself. For example, the article on Physiology has "Science" as the first word you can click. Science links to "Scientific Theory" first, then to Concept. As you can see, the overall progression is from specific to general. Philosophy is the most general concept of all thought, so it makes sense that you would wind up here. Some of the articles move aways from this, but for the two I tried always come back.

Still pretty entertaining though.

I don't know if this works with all possible articles, but it has an interesting implication. If you continue to follow the cycle, Philosophy will probably lead back to itself after some number of pages. This means that any page in the Wikipedia leads to a repeating loop if you keep clicking that first link.

Spooky, huh?

Big Speakers

I am a firm believer of Big speakers. Small speakers don't cut it.

I know there are a number of sub/satellite systems out there, as that's basically all they make these days. Some of them are very good. But it is very rare for one of these to sound as good as a pair of reasonably sized speakers.

My normal listening speakers are 10's, and about the same age as me. I have baby pics of me with them in the background. Nothing really sounds as good. You just can't have decent lower midrange/ upper bass with small sub/sats, You get a "hole" in this area. It is possible to hit this goal, but your sats have to be at the bare minimum about 4 inches. 6.5 and you can get something pretty decent.

A good set of 3 ways will be well matched. The treble will blend with the mids will blend with the bass. Really, this is the main deficiency of the sub/sats. They never merge all that well from mids to bass.

My main speakers sound glorious. If I were to upgrade, it would be a pair of similar sized speakers I built myself. Partly because I like building, and partly because you just can't buy em' like this no more.

Hosting with Unlimited Everything!

I was recently surfing the Information Superhighway, and saw and ad that caught my eye:

Unlimited Bandwidth
Unlimited Hosting Space
99.9% Uptime
*** Only $4.95 per month! ***

You go to the site and find they also offer "free unlimited domains" and "free domain for life".

These hosting plans are always funny to me. I mean, with all that, why doesn't Google just use them and pay $4.95 per month for everything they do? Or, why don't I just mirror the entire web? Based on those statements, both are perfectly reasonable concepts.

The problem, of course, is that it really isn't unlimited. I can actually see the "unlimited" bandwidth. These companies usually use virtual hosting with many sites on each server. There is a physical limit to the bandwidth -- even if the server was unlimited in every way, the pipe going into it is not. If the bandwidth gets really high, it just saturates the connection and nothing works. It ain't pretty, but the bandwidth is self limiting. If they are using, just as an example, a T1, there are only so many bytes you can stream in a month. I have used one such company, which notably does NOT advertise unlimited everything, but does have very generous allowances for all those things. They worked pretty well in my opinion. The way I look at it is that most sites, mine included, probably have minimal traffic. It then makes sense to use virtual hosting. And, if you get Slashdotted, the server and the account probably can handle it to a degree, and you don't get hit with a huge bill.

They give a ton of space knowing most people won't use it. The average most people will use is a finite number. For the argument, say this is 500mb. Then, anything over this amount is meaningless. Yes, the more people are given, the more they will use. And if you give them a huge amount, some will use a huge amount. However, this is the average I am talking about. It probably hits a limit somewhere. You can give them 10 GB or 1000 GB, and the average may still hover at 500 mb, perhaps going from 450 to 500.

Still, if you say "unlimited" storage I can just see someone trying to use it to save and backup terabytes of data. Maybe the limiting factor is that you can only put stuff on there that is actually publicly accessible. Maybe the fine print states you can't have hundreds of encrypted files at the file size limit backing up all your corporate data. And the fact that there probably is some file size limit probably keeps it in check. Still. As I recall, the cheap host I mentioned that I used for my own stuff could actually host files big enough for something like a podcast, so who knows.

The overall point, though, is that it ain't unlimited. If you really wanted to host any site that got more than a few hits per day, you HAVE to have dedicated hosting. Last I checked (a great while ago), the dedicated servers didn't really give that much higher limits than the virtual ones. That outta tell you something: if you actually expect to USE that bandwidth on a regular basis, you better shell out at least $50 to $100 to a few hundred (or more) if you want it to be reliable.

Able Planet NC300

I just purchased these noise cancelling headphones because I will be going on a series of flights throughout the summer. I had a pair of inexpensive headphones which worked moderately well, but decided to step my game up.

I have used the in ear plug style phones before, but they are not my favorite for a few reasons. The biggest is that I find them mildly uncomfortable at first, and annoyingly uncomfortable after a while. They block the noise well and have excellent sound quality, but as they are basically just earplugs with a speaker, they give you that same "closed in" feeling you get with earplugs. By this i mean that you "hear yourself" -- your breathing, swallowing, etc, any noise you make is basically amplified. NC headphones don't really have this quality, the only reason you hear yourself a bit more is that your surroundings are made quieter. Also, one thing I think NC headphones do better is cut noise in the lower registers - the bassier notes. Bass tends to cut through the plugs to an extent, and NC tends to cancel it out. One things the plugs are vastly superior at is, obviously, size. I don't mind toting some bigger phones if they suit me better.

The two "best" NC headphones right now are from Bose and Sony respectively. I was considering one of these, but they are both fairly pricey. Searching the internet, I found that the usual situation existed: pretty much all the reviews are an example of that reviewer's "two cents" about a specific model. While they may be right, this is hardly a consistent, reliable way to gauge something like this. Furthermore, they generally only review a few (professional reviews) or one (personal reviews). There had to be a better way.

I ended up remembering about, and purchasing a subscription to, Consumer Reports. This publication is pretty unique in that it largely uses scientific techniques to rate products. They also don't accept advertising and attempt to remain impartial. You get genuine data - not just some guys opinion of whether it was "good" or "bad". They also seem to rate a pretty big number of products and assign them a scientifically derived score.

The headphones I ended up getting had a very favorable rating, and cost a fair amount less than the Bose or Sony. To seal the deal, a dude in one of the customer comments/reviews owned both mine and the Bose, and stated they were both excellent and pretty much comparable. I put them head to head against my old cheap ones, and there is no comparison. The noise source was an air purifier. The old ones do take a fair amount of the edge off, but let a lot pass through. The new ones let very little of that noise through. It was actually quite remarkable. They come with a nice case, a headphone cable with volume, and adapters for 1/4 phone plug and old school double mono aircraft plug (which I have never actually seen). They fold flat into the case. The headphone cable is separate (plugs into both ends) so you can use them just as a earmuffs if you want without a cable dangling. Very nice.

One thing to remember is that this style of headphone works very well on continuous noise, but less so on transient noise. So jet engines, fans, and such will be blocked very well, but human voices and such much less so. I actually wonder if they will ever be able to make one that can block voices a bit better, perhaps using digital filtering that can fast track and predict minute changes in the voice and remove them. The Sonys in question are digitally based, which is what attracted me to them, but there wasn't anything to indicate they did this (one customer review lamented that they did not). The plug style phones would be better at this, as they just physically block everything.

As for the company, it's Able Planet. Never heard of them. I get the distinct impression that they started off making stuff for handicappers (ie the name "able"), specifically stuff for hearing impaired folk. And then, branched out upon realization that they can make a whole lot more money selling headphones to everyone than just the hearing impaired.

Overall all, this seems to be an excellent purchase. We shall see how they perform on an actual aircraft in 9 hours!

The Best Way of Doing Things: Accelerated Graphics in Browsers and Other GUIs

Quite a while back, I wanted to write an article called "The Best Way of Doing Things". As this is a huge topic, I've decided to break it down into specific things.

Some summery first. I think my idea of this concept has changed a bit from when I first came up with it, but it is roughly the following. There are often several different ways to do something, with one being the clear winner. I am not talking about a few different ways that come up close or are a clear tradeoff, but something that is clearly better. Specifically, it's when the "Best" way is not only superior, but easy / natural to do and has little cost (personal, monetary or whatever), and the other way is clearly inferior.

As an opening example, I'll talk about hardware acceleration for GUIs. Firefox just released version 4, which has this feature. Also, Windows has had this in the form of Aero for some time.

Maybe a decade ago, I probably leaned more in the direction of "what a bunch of overkill BS". But today, that's not the case. A decent computer has more than enough resources to handle this, and those that don't won't be any worse off. Just set it up so that it isn't required / can be turned off. If the computer can do it, why not support it?

I believe that the acceleration makes things, specifically animation and scaling, look a whole lot better. Many people scoffed at Aero, proclaiming it to be pointless. Do you REALLY need your moving window animations to look all slicklike? No, not at all. But it looks a whole lot better when they do. Its the reason fancy smartphones look so slick - when you scroll, you get a perfect, smooth sliding action. That's available on the desktop now. The code is there, the hardware is there, you gain nothing by disabling it. By having it on, there is no *real* advantage, but it looks better.

One of the reasons I might have turned my nose up at this in the past is that I can just imagine MS putting more pointless flashy animations in, and stupid Bob inspired "helpers". Making it look either cutesy, gaudy, or a combination. But they actually toned it down and made it look more professional. This is probably why a lot of people were put off by the idea, they thought it would be a pointless thing that makes for a smoother jumping dog animation when you search. However, you don't see anyone making similar rejections when they see, or better, play with, a fancy smartphone.

Deficit

The deficit in the US is out of control. Not just a little, semi uncomfortable "heh wow that's alot" amount. We are on the fast track to bankruptcy. If this doesn't change, I sincerely believe the USA will cease to exist in the next 20 years.

Every year, besides a few years of the Clinton era, we have outspent what we have taken in. Think about this. Is this sustainable? Is it possible to do this every year and not eventually run into problems?

Every year that this comes up, I think that overall, congress and the citizenry get convinced that deficit spending is something that sounds bad on paper, but is a necessary evil to get important things done. This is really coming to a head. It is SOMETHING YOU CAN'T DO FOREVER.

As bad as the debt has built up to be in the past, the last few years under obama have stepped the defect game up. I was listening to talk radio today, and heard something interesting that I was unable to find online (I'll post it if I do). Basically, the dude took several EXPENSIVE government expenditures of the past, corrected for inflation, and added them on up. I do not remember all of what he added -- here are the ones that stuck. These are the ones I remember with the approximate costs (also as I remember them):
The projects with costs, corrected for inflation, were approximately the following:
Manhattan Project: $180B (4 years)
Korean War: $550B (3-4 years)
Vietnam: $650B (5 years?)
NASA (everything they have ever done): $850B (40 years)
Iraq: $500B (?) (~8 years)
New Deal: ~$500B (8 years?)
Again, going off memory here. I think these are reasonable ballpark, and a few others were mentioned.
But the total: 3.2 Trillion. A big number for some of our biggest expenditures in history, some of the most well known *expensive* things we have done. And remember, this is corrected for inflation and many are over the course of many years. The New Deal was about a decade, and NASA was 4 decades.
Since taking office (so, you know, like 2+ years), the government under obama has gone over budget by something like $3.4 trillion. Let that sink in, and tell me we aren't in deep shit.

I Know It's Been Done to Death but: IPhone, Who Cares?

I still don't understand people's fascination with the iphone. It's not a terrible device as far as I can tell, but it's not the only phone in town. There are numerous Android devices which offer matching or superior performance, without all the BS restrictions apple has.

It seems like I can't read an article about phones services without hearing a mention of it. I was just reading one about T-Mobile, and it included something to the effect of "T-Mobile launched the iphone in germany earlier, but was unable to say whether it would come to the US". Like it is so damned important if it does, like it is the only phone that really matters. T-Mobile has several great Android devices, including the G2, that make the question of the iphone irrelevant.

It's mostly a product of apples marketing, and the fact people are morons. Most people are too stupid to realize that the iphone isn't the only smartphone in existence and as such is the only one they known about. They make it easy because there is only one or two devices you ever need to know about. As far as I am concerned, if you are too stupid to be able to handle more than 2 phones, you probably shouldn't be using one in the first place.

Japan Nuclear Situation, Update

So far, Japan is not yet at the Chernobyl level. My educated guess is that it won't ever get that bad, even in the worse case. However, things do seem to be deteriorating. Information from Japanese authorities conflicts with that from American Nuclear experts. I know it's a stereotype, but the Japanese aren't exactly known for being open when things go wrong, like they don't want to admit it. See the Toyota recall for an example. I certainly hope this is not the case here, but it sure seems like it.

Interesting to note that it sounds like much of the damage may not have been from the quake as I assumed, but from the ensuing tsunami. It sounds like the plant largely survived the quake. Then, the wave swamped the plant, killing their backup generators. This caused the reactors to overheat out of control, bringing us to the current situation. The plant appears to be built on the shore, which doesn't seem like the best of ideas in a place prone to earthquakes and consequently tsunami.

This situation is still surreal. This is not some shoddy Soviet design, but what appears to be a reasonably safe design that was pushed far beyond it's limit.

Also, please, stop comparing this to Three Mile Island. That was a non-event as far as disasters are concerned, and almost no radiation was released. Unfortunately, the comparisons to Chernobyl might be gaining accuracy.

Nuclear Power

I originally wrote this last night but did not post until now:

In the wake of the recent Japanese earthquake, there has been a lot of discussion on nuclear power. Several countries have made immediate statements and even have taken actions to shutdown their reactors. This is a perfect example of mob thinking, which is exacerbated by the media and frequently seems to be the primary driving force behind the policy decisions of governments. The point is that, in my opinion, the collective knowledge of nuclear dangers has not changed as a result of this event. If it took this disaster for these countries to realize the dangers of nuclear power, they clearly didn't understand these dangers and as such should not been pursuing it in the first place.

Nuclear power can be very dangerous, or very useful if properly controlled. If you asked me at any point (going back years) if I thought nuclear power in Japan was a good idea, I would have told you "no". Why? For the simple reason that it is a very earthquake prone region. I'd have given them some credit in that I would assume they would have taken that into account and designed accordingly. Still, it always seemed like a bad idea to me. I have a strong interest in nuclear power and as such have had this opinion for years. I have known for a long time that Japan has many reactors, and always thought this wasn't the best idea.

Put a different way, they built a potentially dangerous thing in a dumb place. This should have little to no effect on the policy of the same thing built in an intelligent place. The problem here is not the inherent danger of nuclear power, it is that they didn't understand this danger.

There is a nuclear station about 60 miles south of where I live, give or take, a major metro area. The local utility wanted to build another reactor there, which would have been the first in many years in the US. I think this is a good idea because it will offset some of our use of coal in the area. Now, who knows if it will happen. Thing is, it is a very safe place geologically for such an installation. Where I live is a downright "earthquake free" area due to the fact we are sitting on a giant slab of solid rock.

A subtopic, which in this case can partly be blamed on Japanese authorities, is that news outlets don't give any sense of scale of the danger in this situation. This is the same news media that will mention both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the same conversation as though they are comparable. Chernobyl was a nuclear nightmare caused be a malfunction in a horribly designed plant, where Three Mile was a major malfunction that only allowed a tiny amount of radiation to escape. For the Japanese reactors, they talk about the radiation that has escaped, but people freak out when they hear "radiation" and don't realize that the amount is important. It can be the difference between a light tap on the shoulder and getting shot in the face with a .44. Right now, they seem to be in the tap phase.

Before I'm done, I want to add that the nuclear situation in Japan is teetering on the edge right now, and has the potential to get way worse. A few of the reactors have lost coolant ability, which is like crossing the streams on the danger scale. I hope for their sake that they get it under control and wish them the best.

Errr, Huh?

http://www.usr.com/

Yep, it's the same US Robotics we all new and loved in the 90s for their dialup modems.

...

Which is apparently still their main business.

How is this possible? How is it possible that 56k analog modems are still profitable?

WTF?

It doesn't so much surprise me that 56k modems are still available as it does that a major name in 56k modems... is still a major name in 56k modems a decade after they started to become obsolete. They were an innovator in the late 90s, and today they make the same shit they did in the late 90s.

My laptop actually has a 56k modem. No idea if it works, never tried it. I actually had to go check just now to confirm it was there. Really, it isn't crazy to have a "lowest common denominator" option, but to be a name brand who's business is largely based on obsolete technology? Strange. It's one thing for it to be integrated into the chipset or for it to be from a no name maker, but wtf.

Even weirder is that POTS* seems to be dying out; a large number of people have their phone service over their internets, not the other way around. Even AT&T UVerse phone works this way - it basically is DSL, and thusly over an old skool phone line, which has high speed data "ghetto rigged" on top of it. And they use the DSL for IP phone service now.

On top of all of that, my CELLPHONE can get 4-5 MBps real world speed. I used it all afternoon today working in a motorhome away from any wired connection. You would not have known it was over a cell if I didn't tell you; it was at DSL/cable speeds.

*Plain Old Telephone Service

Seriously Gearbox, it isn't Rocket Science

http://www.flounder.com/nomultiples.htm

Maybe it just doesn't come up that much?

In any event, I accidentally started a second copy of their glorious Borderlands. Pretty sure that should not be possible. Really, the bare minimum is just implementing the mutex part, only a few lines. All the other lines in that solution are to find the current copy of the program that is running and bring it up. Nice feature, but not required.

Why I don't have Cable

Cable television in recent years has become an abomination. In the past, there were a handful of channels airing "general" programming, and the rest concentrated on fulfilling specific niche topics. As the capacity of cable systems grew, it was generally the niche channels that got added first. You can almost hear them saying "we have 20 new channels to fill. How about a golf channel? How about a cooking channel, or one about travel?" This was the norm for many years.

Recently, most of the niche channels have decided to eschew their niche in favor of what can only be described as bullshit: reality TV. A genre which I find abhorrent.

Take A&E for instance. Once a channel that focused primarily on the fine arts, it now hosts such fine shows as "Dog the Bounty Hunter", "Gene Simmons Family Jewels", "Growing Up Gotti", "Family Plots", "Airline", "Inked", "King of Cars", and "Criss Angel Mindfreak". Really? Do people really watch that crap? I would rather be shot in the face than watch 5 minutes of any of those. And the thing is, supposedly, they made the switch because it actually generates more revenue. Huh. The "History" Channel, once a hold out in this race, now features "Ice Road Truckin" and a slew of conspiracy oriented crap. And the list goes on. At this point, as far as I know, MOST of these channels have switched largely to reality crap.

They've taken what was once decent programming and cheapened it, in the interest of profit. What scares me is that this actually is profitable; are people really that stupid/shallow? Plus, is there NO room for what they used to show? I mean, how many reality shows do we need? That appears to be all that cable is right now, cheap ass reality TV.

Sometimes, they add new channels whose purpose seems to be to replace the old channel that has "gone reality" (like the military channel in place of history). How long is it before these too succumb to the power of bullshit? Take the National Geographic Channel, which still does offer some educational programming, but also features the classics "Hard Time", "Prison Women", and my personal favorite, "the Dog Whisperer".

I've considered getting cable, but have not, because of this situation. There are a few things I want to watch, but to me paying for a cable subscription is essentially paying $50 or more (!) per month for all the reality BS i can watch. Pass.

Interestingly enough, Discovery, probably one of the first channels to sell out by "broadening" its programming is currently arguably the closest to its original intent. They are pretty light on the hard science documentary type stuff, but a lot of their programming actually is mildly educational.