X-Geek

Extreme geekiness

There are 699 posts filed in X-Geek (this is page 13 of 70).

The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted

This is a fascinating interview with the founders of AOL Instant Messenger, a trailblazing messaging tool that had its spectacular rise and fall under the largely-clueless leadership of AOL.

When we think about the spectacular collapses of once untouchable Internet properties, companies like MySpace and Pets.com come to mind. The rise and fall of AOL Instant Messenger rivals them all. Once the dominant force in digital messaging and a source of innovations other companies spun off into billions of dollars of businesses, AIM is now mostly dormant. Mashable sat down with three of the early engineers of the program to learn about its origins, why AOL never quite embraced the concept of a free messaging service, getting hacked by Microsoft and the features that never quite made it to users.

Source: The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted

Apple CEO Tim Cook DID NOT say Americans Are Talentless And Taxes Are Dumb (VIDEO) – EgbertoWillies.com

Why do Tim Cook and Apple hate America? Cook obviously misses the connection that the taxes Apple should be paying would go towards better educating and training American workers. Apple’s habit of offshoring its massive profits is just one of many reasons I am not an Apple fanboy.

The reality is, Tim Cooks statements in the whole interview are worse than the article implies. He shows a tone deafness to what is really creating our economic problems, income and wealth disparity and more. His company plays a huge part in creating and continuing the problem.

Tim Cook is a plutocrat and an extractor of resources from America even as he refuses to employ massively here, or give back. Worse is his statement. He shows a lack of understanding of real economics most CEOs fail to realize.

The educational system fails because of corporations like his unwilling to be taxed so that said taxes can be reinvested into educating Americans, rebuilding infrastructure, and just giving Americans a living wage. Those Chinese acquired those skills from both investments by corporations who want cheap labor and a country that accepts it. Tim Cook’s company, Apple, and companies like his keep America’s government and structures underfunded even as they profit massively from our markets and the defense our powerful military provides them implicitly.

Source: Apple CEO Tim Cook DID NOT say Americans Are Talentless And Taxes Are Dumb (VIDEO) – EgbertoWillies.com

Meeting the Google Fiber team

This afternoon I got a sneak peek at the new Google Fiber building in downtown Durham, thanks to a friend who works there. I got to meet the Google Fiber team as well and they’re good people.

They’re still putting the finishing touches on their Fiber Space on the first floor so I wasn’t able to see that but news reports say Google expects it to open sometime this month. Indeed, when I visited there were two construction workers outside, busily working over a noisy table saw.

The word is their new Fiber Space in Raleigh will be amazing. Google loves the building! Large skylights have been added. Also, contrary to what you may have heard, Google did not kick out 518 West from the space. The building was put up for sale and Google bought it.

Beyond that, I know little more than you do about when fiber’s going where. I do know that whatever time it arrives on my doorstep it won’t be soon enough. I can’t wait to get my Google Fiber!

Computers getting more efficient all the time

I was chatting at a party Friday night with a gentleman who sells data center construction projects. He made the point that data center power consumption accounts for 4% of overall electricity consumption. What’s more, he said that this percentage is only going to go up.

I’ve been thinking for a while now about how cloud technologies are not only affecting our computing habits but also our power consumption. When the Internet Age first dawned, the backend of websites consisted of beefy servers that did all the work of serving up websites: databases to churn out data, a layer to render it (PHP, Java, etc.), and so forth.
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No Damned Computer is Going to Tell Me What to Do – The Story of the Naval Tactical Data System, NTDS

This is an excellent (and extensive) history of the Navy’s Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), the computerized mapping of threats. I worked with NTDS in the Navy but never knew how its development not only revolutionized naval warfare but also spurred the development of modern digital computers.

It was 1962. Some of the prospective commanding officers of the new guided missile frigates, now on the building ways, had found out that the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) was going to be built into their new ship, and it did not set well with them. Some of them came in to our project office to let us know first hand that no damned computer was going to tell them what to do. For sure, no damned computer was going to fire their nuclear tipped guided missiles. They would take their new ship to sea, but they would not turn on our damned system with its new fangled electronic brain.

We would try to explain to them that the new digital system, the first digitized weapon system in the US Navy, was designed to be an aid to their judgment in task force anti-air battle management, and would never, on its own, fire their weapons. We didn’t mention to them that if they refused to use the system, they would probably be instantly removed from their commands and maybe court martialed because the highest levels of Navy management wanted the new digital computer-driven system in the fleet as soon as possible, and for good reason.

Secretary of the Navy John B. Connally, a former World War II task force fighter director officer, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh A. Burke were solidly behind the new system, and were pushing the small NTDS project office in the Bureau of Ships to accomplish in five years what would normally take thirteen years. The reason behind their push was Top Secret, and thus not known even by many naval officers and senior civil servants in the top hierarchy of the navy. Senior navy management did not want the Soviet Union to know that task force air defense exercises of the early 1950s had revealed that the US surface fleet could not cope with expected Soviet style massed air attacks using new high speed jet airplanes and high speed standoff missiles.

Source: First-Hand:No Damned Computer is Going to Tell Me What to DO – The Story of the Naval Tactical Data System, NTDS – Engineering and Technology History Wiki

Fun with a green screen

Travis's green screen setup. Lights are helpful but not necessary.

Travis’s green screen setup. Lights are helpful but not necessary.


Since the office was officially working a half-day Wednesday due to it being the day before Thanksgiving, I decided not to make the monotonous one-mile commute into the office and instead worked from home. Being geographically dispersed, my team meets daily via videoconference and I decided I was done with putting the walls of our spare bedroom on display for my coworkers to see.

The day before a holiday called for something a little more whimsical, so I hatched a plan. I found some free software for the Mac called CamTwist that can do chroma key. Chroma key is the “green screen” technique that TV studios use to insert backgrounds behind their reporters and presenters. A few years ago our son, Travis, got a green cloth that makes a decent green screen. I borrowed his green cloth, set it up behind my office desk, fired up CamTwist, and displayed a holiday-appropriate scene behind me of wild turkeys in the woods. My coworkers loved it!
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A Bold Future that Wasn’t: the NS Savannah

NS Savannah

NS Savannah (Photo by Maritime Park Association)


Behold the future.

The NS Savannah was the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship. She steamed for over 400,000 miles from 1962 to 1970 as the flagship of President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative, but her operational costs, meager cargo capacity, and the extensive training required of the crews doomed her. She now resides at Pier 13 in Baltimore awaiting the removal of her reactor and can be toured upon request.

This site gives you a virtual-reality look at this forgotten engineering and design masterpiece. It’s a walk back in time to the more hopeful, futuristic outlook of the late 1950s. I’d love to see it in person (and it can be done by following the instructions in this FAQ list).

Welcome to the Nuclear Ship Savannah, the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship.

Savannah was a signature element of President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. She was constructed as a joint project of the former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Maritime Administration. She operated from 1962 to 1965 in experimental service, at which time the AEC issued her commercial operating license number NS-1. Savannah continued in demonstration service as a cargo ship until 1970 when she ended her active career. She was defueled in 1971 and her reactor made permanently inoperable in 1975-76. About 95% of the power plant is intact and remains onboard ship. Savannah is still licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC is the successor to the AEC), and will remain so until nuclear decommissioning.

Source: NS Savannah – Virtual Tour

Filmmakers fighting “Happy Birthday” copyright find their “smoking gun” | Ars Technica

A judge has ruled that Warner/Chappell’s claim of the song “Happy Birthday” is invalid and the song is in the public domain. This has long been a notable case of copyright abuse and it’s thrilling to see it finally corrected.

It’s been two years since filmmakers making a documentary about the song “Happy Birthday” filed a lawsuit claiming that the song shouldn’t be under copyright. Now, they have filed (PDF) what they say is “proverbial smoking-gun evidence” that should cause the judge to rule in their favor.

The “smoking gun” is a 1927 version of the “Happy Birthday” lyrics, predating Warner/Chappell’s 1935 copyright by eight years. That 1927 songbook, along with other versions located through the plaintiffs’ investigations, “conclusively prove that any copyright that may have existed for the song itself… expired decades ago.”

Source: Filmmakers fighting “Happy Birthday” copyright find their “smoking gun” | Ars Technica

What Programmers Want | Michael O. Church

Interesting take on what motivates a software engineer. This is three years old but surprisingly relevant.

Most people who have been assigned the unfortunate task of managing programmers have no idea how to motivate them. They believe that the small perks (such as foosball tables) and bonuses that work in more relaxed settings will compensate for more severe hindrances like distracting work environments, low autonomy, poor tools, unreasonable deadlines, and pointless projects. They’re wrong. However, this is one of the most important things to get right, for two reasons. The first is that programmer output is multiplicative of a number of factors– fit with tools and project, skill and experience, talent, group cohesion, and motivation. Each of these can have a major effect (plus or minus a factor of 2 at least) on impact, and engineer motivation is one that a manager can actually influence. The second is that measuring individual performance among software engineers is very hard. I would say that it’s almost impossible and in practical terms, economically infeasible. Why do I call infeasible rather than merely difficult? That’s because the only people who can reliably measure individual performance in software are so good that it’s almost never worth their time to have them doing that kind of work. If the best engineers have time to spend with their juniors, it’s more worthwhile to have them mentoring the others (which means their interests will align with the employees rather than the company trying to perform such measurement) than measuring them, the latter being a task they will resent having assigned to them.

Source: What Programmers Want | Michael O. Church

Alexander: Do those new chip-based credit and debit cards need protection? – StarTribune.com

I was chatting with the cashier supervisor at the local Large Mart, asking if Large Mart would be going to the new, chip-based credit cards.

“Yeah, we’re going to get those within the next few weeks,” he said.

I nodded. “Well, I’ve been the victim of credit card fraud so many times that I welcome the extra security.”

“The new cards also have security problems,” the supervisor answered. “With the chip cards, thieves can read your cards while they’re in your wallet.”

That was news to me. The chip on my card is definitely a contact card, and any RFID-based credit card would be wide open to the world and truly offer zero security. Fortunately, banks aren’t using RFID, but Near-Field Communication (NFC), and only in some chips (i.e., not in the U.S. at this time). NFC has a range of 2-4 inches, which is about 1/12th the range of an RFID tag. Also, an NFC-capable device does encryption, while an RFID tag would only stupidly transmit static numbers.

So, tl;dr: current chip cards in the U.S. are contact-only, and NFC chips won’t be readable outside of your wallet. Bring on the chipped-card revolution, I say!

Q: Do the new EMV chip credit cards (named after the developers, Europay, MasterCard and Visa) require a protective cover so that they can’t be scanned by nearby thieves, just as RFID (radio frequency identification) cards do? Do other radio frequency ID cards, such as hotel key cards, pose a risk of identity theft?
Jan Sartee,
San Rafael, Calif.

A: There are two types of credit cards using EMV chip technology. One is read by a slot in a point-of-sale ­terminal; the other is read by holding the card near the sales terminal.

If your EMV card requires physical contact inside a reader, its transactions and account information can’t be scanned remotely by thieves. If it is a contactless card, there’s a chance it could be read by nearby spying equipment, although the credit card ­industry says that’s unlikely.

Source: Alexander: Do those new chip-based credit and debit cards need protection? – StarTribune.com