X-Geek

Extreme geekiness

There are 699 posts filed in X-Geek (this is page 28 of 70).

Saving passwords in browsers

SalesForce.com
I get annoyed at some companies’ misguided attempts at password security. Take SalesForce.com, for instance (please!).

SalesForce is a web-based customer relationship management system. It holds a lot of sensitive corporate data and rightly should be protected from unauthorized access. While we SalesForce customers are expected to trust SalesForce with we consider sensitive data, SalesForce does not trust us with what itconsiders sensitive data, namely one’s own SalesForce password. SalesForce deliberately disables the ability of Firefox and other webbrowers to automatically save your SalesForce password and automatically re-enter it when you return to the login page.
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Mosquito Photonic Fence

Here’s a novel new twist on the old “bug zapper” concept: a laser-shooting Death Star against mosquitoes. Of course Bill Gates had to be involved, right?

In 2007, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation asked Intellectual Ventures to create new technologies that will not only fight malaria but will eventually eliminate this scourge of humanity altogether. Already our team of entomologists, epidemiologists, physicists, and other scientists have come up with innovative approaches that attack the parasite that causes the disease from several angles. Some make it easier to diagnose the disease quickly and accurately. Others destroy the parasites directly. Still others target the mosquitoes that serve as hosts to the parasites and spread malaria from person to person

via Malaria » Intellectual Ventures Lab.

Cheap Thoughts: Telepresence

Speaking of working from home, we have an arrangement here at work that is a pretty interesting use of telepresence tools. One of our developers works remotely but needs to attend occasional meetings. Rather than fly him in and out, we’ve set him up with a Wifi-enabled camera which he can use to pan, tilt, and zoom around the room. All that’s missing is some way for him to drive the camera from room to room and he could be virtually here. The camera isn’t cheap but it easily paid for itself the very first time it kept our developer from traveling.

I was thinking of bringing in my now-unused Roomba vacuum and using that to move the camera around. I could slap a small UPS battery on top to power the camera and interface it with the camera software to let it be controlled remotely.

Another thing that would be useful to telepresence tools would be an additional fisheye-lens camera. This should show the whole room in a separate window while the main camera is pointed somewhere else. When the viewer needs to focus on something or someone in the room, the viewer will know where the main camera needs to be pointed. Better yet, the viewer could simply click on a point on the room image and the main camera would point there. That might make it painless enough that attending a meeting virtually wouldn’t be so much about fiddling with the tools but being able to focus on the meeting itself.

Interesting stuff. I’ll have to see what I can put together to make this work.

Another doomsday threat dies out

Looks like the killer asteroid Aphohis won’t become a killer any time soon. New data shows it passing Earth in 2036 (2068 may be another matter).

Radar observations made during this week’s close encounter with the asteroid Apophis have ruled out the risk of a catastrophic cosmic collision in 2036, NASA says. Experts say it’ll be much farther away at that time than it is right now.

The crucial readings came on Wednesday when the space rock, which is thought to measure at least 885 feet (270 meters wide), approached within 9 million miles (14.5 million kilometers) of Earth. NASA is monitoring Apophis with its 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone radio dish in California. Optical readings also have come in from the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico and the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii.

The bottom line? "We have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036," Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said today in the all-clear news release. “The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future.”

via Another doomsday threat dies out: Asteroid Apophis won't hit us in 2036 – Cosmic Log.

Lenovo no go

In addition to the ton of other stuff I got done this weekend, I spent a lot of time getting my gadgets up and running. Last night I’ve stayed up way too late futzing with my new Lenovo laptop, for instance, trying to get Red Hat’s Fedora Linux installed on it. Apparently this is something that’s damn near impossible. It’s taken all (and I mean all) of my considerable Linux skills to make any progress with this.

Lenovo apparently took some shortcuts with its laptop firmware which throws Linux for a loop during an installation. Rather than work around it, Red Hat tends to frown on Lenovo’s broken implementation. They do this in spite of Lenovo being, oh, just the world’s largest PC manufacturer whose North America headquarters is, oh, just fifteen miles away from Red Hat’s headquarters. You’d think these two companies could get it together but you’d apparently be smoking something if you did.

My solution involves hacking Fedora’s installer and learning far more about it than I care to know. I’ll post my working solution once I find it. For now, suffice to say that a if a grizzled Linux veteran like me has this much trouble simply getting Linux set up on a new laptop then it’s no wonder most people don’t want to touch it.

Suddenly buried in gadgets

Well, that didn’t last long. I was all set to eschew getting more stuff when local PC manufacturer Lenovo had its public warehouse sale on Saturday. I wound up buying a new laptop and an IdeaPad K1 tablet. Much of my Copious Free Time has been spent getting these set up, leaving me less time for blogging. I hope to be able to post more starting this evening.

In my defense, this is the first brand-new laptop I’ve ever bought. This explains why there are so many non-working old laptops lying around the house. That, and I’m a packrat and a geek!

BBC News – Swimming robot reaches Australia

This is pretty amazing.

A self-controlled swimming robot has completed a journey from San Francisco to Australia.

The record-breaking 9,000 nautical mile (16,668km) trip took the PacX Wave Glider just over a year to achieve.

Liquid Robotics, the US company behind the project, collected data about the Pacific Ocean’s temperature, salinity and ecosystem from the drone.

via BBC News – Swimming robot reaches Australia after record-breaking trip.

SAS buying rPath’s assets

I learned yesterday that rPath’s assets have been sold to SAS, essentially bringing rPath to an end, it seems.

Business analytics software company SAS is acquiring the assets of Raleigh-based startup rPath.

RPath, which was founded in 2005 by former Red Hat employees, is in the process of shutting down. Some of its staff – 19 employees – will accompany the technology and join SAS, forming the Platform Deployment Technologies group within SAS’ research and development operations.

I interviewed there more than once for a sales engineer position last year. I also set up rPath’s first phone system, based on Asterisk. For a while there I was sure rPath would be the next VMWare. Instead it’s been chopped up. It’s a shame, but I’m glad I didn’t sign up there only to be looking for work now.

via SAS buying Raleigh startup’s assets – Triangle Business Journal.

FCC readies for new LPFM stations

Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission cleared the way for new LPFM stations to apply for licenses. This “window” is scheduled to open in October 2013.

Little Raleigh Radio is on its way!

The FCC has just announced that it is prepared to implement the Local Community Radio Act — a bill that aims to give local community groups the opportunity to broadcast on low-power FM stations beyond small rural areas. The bill was signed into law in January, 2011 by President Obama after a decade of advocacy from supporters, and allows low-power stations to be created within three radio dial clicks of a major station.

via FCC order enables creation of thousands of new non-commercial local radio stations | The Verge.

Holiday Gift Guide: Ideal gifts for the techie on your list

This is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen printed in the News and Observer:

For the DIYer

Getting Started with Arduino Kit v3.0: $65

www.makershed.com/Getting_Started_with_Arduino_Kit_V3_0_p/msgsa.htm

The Arduino Starter Kit from Maker Shed is a gift beginners and pros both can appreciate. The kit opens the door to the popular microcontroller lauded by DIY computing geeks, and is designed as a companion to the “Getting Started with Arduino” book by Massimo Banzi, founder of the open source Arduino project. Some minor soldering is required for the power supply, but the other components plug into the board. This should make for some great parent-child team projects. Look out science fair.

BoingBoing also linked to a video made by Arduino cofounder Massimo Banzi explaining basic electronics. Arduino is one project I need to explore further!

via Holiday Gift Guide: Ideal gifts for the techie on your list – Life – NewsObserver.com.