Category Archives: Rants & Raves

XBox

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One thing I find interesting about technology is that sometimes a trivial technological thing has huge differences to the end user.

I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto a bit in my spare time, on the Xbox 360. After re-arranging some things, I’ve run into a strange problem where, when I power it up, it loads older game files, not the newest. I know exactly what’s wrong, but it’s kind of like the “roger tone” to “FRS” leap–intuitively understanding what’s wrong here borders on savantism.

When I rearranged things, I didn’t bother to plug the Xbox back into my switch. I think the cable it was using is out in another room right now. So the Xbox has no Ethernet connection. Are you seeing why my game loads really old saved data yet? Hint: the game doesn’t use the network in any way, shape, or form.

The Xbox, when it’s connected to the Internet, will grab the correct time via the web. (I’ve wondered about this, actually: is it using NTP? Is it syncing to time.windows.com? I’ve been tempted to try packet sniffing, but it would basically require ARP poisoning, which I’m reluctant to do right now, as both the Xbox and my laptop are essentially on the school’s network, so it wouldn’t be too easy to “safely” do it.)

For some reason, though, when shut down, the Xbox never runs a “systohw” call (or at least, that’s what it is under UNIX) — the system clock, which was just synchronized and is quite accurate, is never written to the hardware clock. So two weeks ago, when I booted my Xbox, it was March 14, 2008. I saved a game, shut down the console, and went to bed. And then I rearranged stuff and realized that there was no reason for my Xbox to be online, so I moved the cable to the common room.

So the Xbox, now booting with no Internet connection, thinks it’s November of 2006, since the software clock never got committed to hardware. And the game, not anticipating bizarre things like this, automatically loads the game with the newest timestamp. As far as it’s concerned, the game I saved two weeks ago is a year and a half “newer” than what I saved earlier today.

So there you have it — whether I have an Ethernet cable hooked up or not changes the year on my Xbox, which causes it to load old games. And it’s all because the Xbox, for reasons I can’t understand, never writes the time to the hardware clock. (To me, this is a bug, and one that would require adding one line of code.) And it shows something neat (or scary, depending on your perspective) about programming — trivial details (like whether you sync the hardware clock to the software clock when you shut down) manifest in entirely unexpected ways, like which save file my video game opens.

Geek

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So my building here is one in a “set” of three dormitories. There’s a walkway, and another building on the other side of it. (And the third is to their side.) As I came back from class, I noticed a rope running from a room on the floor above mine across to the room pretty much opposite mine. It was extremely nice out today, so even those of us not creating improvised clotheslines (?) had our windows open.

We took a partial interest in whatever they were up to, but mostly about our business, just periodically looking to see what they were up to. We could also hear everything they were saying. So I sat at my desk working on something or other, when I heard a “roger beep.” I instinctively knew that it was from an FRS radio. It’s one of those silly noises they make at the end of a transmission. (As compared to things like MODAT [.wav] or MDC1200 [.wav], which are useful for ANI.) I’ve only ever heard it on FRS, so I “just knew.”

Of course, merely thinking, “They must be using FRS” because of a sound I overheard wasn’t geeky enough. So without missing a beat, I picked up my ASTRO Saber and switched to the “Zone” I’d created for the FRS band, and threw it into scan mode. A couple minutes later they transmitted again, and the scan stopped on Channel 2. Sadly, they didn’t discuss the actual purpose of the wire, only the difficulties they were facing on one of the ends.

It was tempting to radio back, “What exactly are you guys doing?,” but I didn’t want to blow my cover just yet. And besides, this thing puts out five Watts, ten times the power allowed on the band. (And the deviation/bandwidth is probably wrong, and it’s not type-certified…) Oh, and I think I probably have it set up to send an MDC PTT-ID.

It really concerns me how my mind works sometimes.

Nightmare Playgrounds

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Excerpt
MetaFilter, the parent component of my beloved Ask MetaFilter, is quickly earning its place as one of the sites I check daily.

A post there today links to a priceless photo gallery, Nightmare Playgrounds. They’re photos of actual playgrounds, surely designed by people who had disturbed childhoods and wanted to ensure that generations of children to follow would have the same.

What’s scary isn’t just the photos of the playgrounds… It’s that people actually thought it was a good idea to put these things in playgrounds. And that kids actually play at playgrounds with these freaky things in them.

Stopping Blogger Spam

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It’s very common for spammers to create blogs on Blogger (something.blogspot.com). There’s a survey out there that found that 74% of blogs on the site were spam.

It turns out that you can report spam blogs pretty easily on Blogger: they’ve got a form for it here. You won’t find it linked to on their site (or at least, I didn’t), but it’s available. Use it and make the Internet a better place!

Weird Spam

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I somehow came to read the “blog” of the Perl NOC one day–the network admins for the perl.org sites. They get some really amusing spam. And then there’s that category of things where you think it might be spam, but you’re not sure, like this one.

But anyway, today I was checking through my own mail that got filtered as spam, and got the following:

from    Selma Orr 
to  helen@n1zyy.com,
date    Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:27 PM
subject I hate you damm

Instant delivery worldwide. Certified by VISA and VeriSign.

http://irisembreyck.blogspot.com

They spam me, tell me they hate me, curse at me, and then expect me to buy whatever they’re selling? Also, why does “helen@n1zyy.com” get a lot of spam? That address never existed! (I should disclaim that this message wasn’t actually sent to helen@n1zyy.com, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten it. But I get rejected mail to helen@n1zyy.com showing up in the logfiles daily!)

Fighting Terrorism for Real

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Does anyone else remember the Air Marshals? I seem to recall that, once upon a time, every single flight had an air marshal on it. They’re basically federal agents who ride the plane undercover and carry a gun and extensive training. Anyone who tries to hijack a plane would find that the air marshals had different plans for them.

So with billions and billions in funding going to making us feel safer from terrorists, what percentage of flights would you think have air marshals aboard them?

The TSA won’t say, but CNN’s put the number at less than 1%.

Let’s try to actually fund this? You can’t say you’re tough on terrorism and then refuse to fund programs to stop it. It seems like one of the few programs that might actually work.

Flaming Pants

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I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but Hillary spoke the other day about how she was “battle-tested” and ready to lead the country, unlike Obama. (Or so she thinks.)

CBS quotes her as having said:

“I remember landing under sniper fire… There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Wow, sounds impressive. The problem? The CBS article continues:

Problem is: that’s not how it happened at all. And we should know: CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson and a CBS News crew accompanied the First Lady on that Bosnia trip. A photograph shows Clinton talking to Attkisson on the military flight into Tuzla. And pictures CBS News recorded show the greeting ceremony when the plane landed… [T]here was no sniper fire either when Clinton visited two army outposts, where she posed for photos. And no sniper fire back at the base, where she sang in a USO show starring Sinbad and Sheryl Crowe.

It’s great that she was over visiting troops in Bosnia, don’t get me wrong. It’d just be nice if, you know, she didn’t start wildly embellishing tales. And in an election where every move gets scrutinized, didn’t she realize that her lying would set her up for comments like this one:

Mike Allen of Politico.com said: “Who knows if she misremembered, misspoke, exaggerated, whatever. It makes the case for Sen. Obama that all this experience that she’s been talking about is at least partly in her imagination.”

Also, the comments on CBS News are rapidly plummeting in quality, and may soon surpass Youtube in terms of insanely bad comments…

Enough Already

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I used to like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They were both well-qualified, I thought, and the country would be in good hands either way. But I worried that Hillary had too many people who were opposed to her for one reason or another, so I thought Obama had a better chance of getting the Democratic nomination. I still supported Hillary, mind you, just not as much.

That all ended several months ago. It seems to me that every time she opens her mouth, she comes across as more and more bitter. She’s polarizing the Democratic party, and embarassing us at the same time. While she’s better than McCain, getting shot in the face is better than burning dying in a fire.

If you’d asked me in February to pick my top two Democratic candidates, I’d have said Obama and Richardson. And I haven’t wavered on that. (Clinton dropped from third place, though, to dead last among the Democrats.) They complement each other perfectly. So I was ecstatic when Richardson just came out in support of Obama.

Of course, the Clintons were not pleased. Which brings up another point of mine: I used to like Bill Clinton. Sure, he could have exercised some better control in personal matters, but if that’s the biggest criticism eight years later, job well done. But now he’s getting nasty and negative. I saw a survey somewhere that showed that his approval rating (yes, they apparently do track approval ratings of past presidents) has gone down since he started campaigning for Hillary. Fail.

But in the linked article, Richardson explains that he doesn’t think he’s “crossed” the Clintons, nor that he owed her his endorsement. But the best part of all is this little bit:

Richardson was asked Sunday about James Carville’s comment that Richardson’s Obama endorsement “came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver.” Carville is an adviser to Clinton’s presidential campaign and a CNN political analyst. “Well, I’m not going to get in the gutter like that,” Richardson said. “And you know, that’s typical of many of the people around Sen. Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency.”

He’s starting to exhibit something that Obama rocks at: people come at him with some sort of low blow, and he manages to say exactly the right thing to deflect the attack and end up making the attacker look like the idiot. (Remember when someone started questioning Obama’s patriotism because he stopped wearing his little flag lapel pin? His response was that he’d noticed that the flags often served as a replacement for “true patriotism.”) And… Did Carville mean to equate Hillary with Jesus in his analogy?

(Also, I have to wonder… How is it not a conflict of interest to be “an adviser to Clinton’s presidential campaign and a CNN political analyst?” Are they familiar with the Republican jibe that CNN stands for “Clinton News Network?”)

In conclusion… Where’s my Obama-Richardson ’08 bumper sticker?

Business School

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As I’ve mentioned in a few past posts, those of us in business school really don’t think normally. Having found that there are a lot of good jobs in Nashua (versus my previously-narrow search in Boston), I started looking, out of curiosity, at real estate in Nashua. And I stumbled across this place, a home with an attached storefront.

It’s located in a very dense rural area, and seems like it may have a high percentage of renters in the neighborhood. So I thought a laundromat may do well. Of course, you also stock a lot of vending machines. Although labor really isn’t necessary, I’d probably want to employ one person to watch over things, and maybe to do laundry for people who want to drop stuff off, and to help customers who need it. I’ve read that it’s hard to keep good staff, but really, the job requirements are minimal–you have to be able to work a washing machine, be friendly to people, and watch over the store. You’d probably have a lot of free time, too, which could be spent watching TV, surfing the web, or whatever. And I don’t think I could bring myself to pay less than $8/hour or so.

It’s hard to find much information on commercially-available solutions, but a “water recycling” system could help cut costs, too–filtering the “waste water” and reusing it. Additionally, I’d sell plastic “gift cards,” at a small discount. ($50 for $45 or so.) The cards would also help everyone by not being coins, meaning that they wouldn’t have to lug around a pocket full of quarters, and I wouldn’t have to empty huge hoppers of quarters. (Although a lot of coin-based places seem to end up being “closed loops” of quarters–you put your bills into the change machine, get quarters, and put them into the washers or vending machines. So at the end of the week, I go in and move the quarters back into the change machine, and take the bills to the bank.) Selling the pre-paid cards, though, would generate a lot of cash up front, which could be put into a high-yield savings account. If you get a gift certificate for your birthday, how long until you spend it? Especially when it’s a “bulk” item (something you can spent on multiple visits), it may well be six months or longer before you’ve depleted it. Further, gift certificates also get forgotten and lost. Thus, if I sell $5,000 in gift certificates, I might only ever have an expense of, say, $4,500. And that $5,000 is in the bank earning me a decent chunk of interest.

They now make cheap security cameras that do resolutions like 1280×1024, versus the standard 640×480. And with things like ZoneMinder on Linux, it’s easy to set up an excellent camera system on the cheap.

I’d also pull in a cheap cable/DSL line and offer free WiFi for people doing laundry. Hopefully, while waiting for their laundry, they’d also buy some food from the vending machines. (As long as I have someone working there, actually, we could maybe serve fresh, hot food, like hot dogs or pizza!)

And of course, there are benefits to me besides the income. I wouldn’t need a washer and dryer in my home, since I’d have a dozen attached to my home. And I wouldn’t need to buy Internet access, since I’ve already got it at the laundromat. Plus, it’s occasionally a problem to have packages delivered to my house, as no one’s home and they might need a signature. Now I’ve got an employee who could collect them.

Of course, only after developing a killer business plan in my head did it occur to me that maybe I don’t want a home in a not-so-hot neighborood, especially one where I don’t have a driveway.

Boycott the Olympics

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I’ve never liked the Olympics. I don’t like watching sports on TV. I can watch a Sox game because they’re “my” team,” and I’m cool with the Patriots games being on in the background. The Olympics, though, aren’t fun to watch. So without anything against them, I already have no interest.

I’m also really annoyed at the commercialization. Networks pay big money to lock up the contracts for TV coverage. Everything under the sun becomes Olympic-branded, costing big bucks.

But the biggest reason of all? China’s hosting them. Even as they leave communism, they’ve got major problems. They run a firewall system blocking huge parts of the Internet that’s arguably more restrictive than that in third-world military regimes. But with rising unrest about Tibet, China’s cracking down on media coverage even more, including an apparent blanket ban on coverage from Tienanmen Square.

So don’t waste your time. I know I won’t.

Actually, the more I look into it, the more reason I find. They’re banning poor people and the mentally-disabled. That’s pretty scary.

Of course, it’s not all bad: “The Beijing government has issued new mandates that require police officers in the city to act more appropriately. The government has circulated pamphlets urging officers to desist from using foul language, lose their arrogance, and not hang up on people who call to report crimes.”