Google and the moon?

Let me first say that this post is 'on the lighter side of things', and is not intended to be serious. That said, don't discount the possibilities.

If you haven't heard about Google's offering to anyone who can launch a lunar rover to the moon, then read up. Why might Google want this to be done?

Servers. Yes, that's right. If Google could launch servers to the moon at a low $30 Million, it would be cheaper. Why? Many reasons.

1. Physical security. Not just anyone can get to the moon. And of those that could, they would be known, and can be monitored. Furthermore, any data they send could be monitored and/or jammed, or their landing location would be determinable for pickup. Plus Google has eyes watching the moon at their whim, giant eyes in the sky. Physical security overrides every other security.

2. E-Security. Even if there is some noteworthy flaw in the server's security or Google's access to these machines, there would be small windows of time when the machines could be contacted. This would mean that the times to watch for attackers would be much smaller. Furthermore, since Google would be the only one officially accessing it, it would be easy to filter by IP, MAC address, etc. They could also use very precise laser communication so you have to have a certain physical location to have any access.

3. Space. Yes, there is almost limitless space available up there for the taking. If Google launched their servers up there, it would be at least a few years before real estate would be in more demand up there. So Google could claim say, 20 acres for nothing but servers. They wouldn't need a building, as there wouldn't be rain or storms or people.

4. Electricity. Since space would be at practically no cost--just the cost to get there and set up, Google could have massive solar arrays to power the servers. Power would be 'free'.

5. Cooling. Probably one of Google's largest issues right now. The fact that the moon has only 1/4 of an inch of dust covering rock, and since rock is a fairly good conductor of heat, the moon could be used as a giant heatsink. Furthermore, if machines were used to drill into the rock, liquid (or compressed gas) could be pumped into the rock to extend the depth of the heatsink.

So, is free cooling, 'free' power, free land and free security worth the cost of flying (several trips) to the moon? Well, since data centers cost millions by themselves, and the staff to run it costs a minimum of $50K/person/year, for at least 100 people, and land around here typically goes for hundreds of thousands by the acre (plus the cost of preparing it), , plus security, plus electricity, plus.... It probably is worth tens of millions to do it.

Is there a lunar data center in the future? I guess we will have to ask the man on the moon, as he would be the one Google has to negotiate with.

ZunePhone? 30 ways I say "NO THANKS!"

Microsoft is saying there may be a possible 'ZunePhone" in the near future. Due to Microsoft's software (OS) track record, I think I'll pass. Why?

1. When you go to a cellphone company, they would only be allowed to offer ZunePhones.
2. When you buy a plan, the phone will come preinstalled. If you want to use another phone, you will have to buy it and put it on the plan yourself.
3. When you power the phone on, it will take several minutes to boot.
4. When you first turn on the phone, you will have to activate the phone within 30 days lest it cease to work or go into 'reduced functionality mode', meaning it will only accept calls from telemarketers.
   
5. You will only be able to change phones settings a maximum of 3 times in 6 months or you will have to call Microsoft to reactivate your cellphone plan.
6. During a call, the phone might lockup forcing you to pull the battery.
7. Upon powering on again, the phone might bluescreen.
8. You would have to purchase extra software to take notes or manage your contact list.
9. You might have to put up with Clippy's "You appear to be making a call, would you like to...."!
10. On patch Tuesday you will have to click "Later" on the update popup.
11. If you keep auto update enabled, you will have to fear that the update might brick your phone or lead to a "red ring of death".
12. If you accept the update, you will have to fear it will force you to restart the phone no matter what you are doing, or be bugged to death every time you open the phone.
13. You will have to fear Microsoft might push an update that causes your phone to declare you are a pirate and automatically call Microsoft so they can demand payment, or your phone will not work for other calls (not even 911)!
14. You will have to install drivers for every device your phone connects to.
15. You will have to worry Microsoft will save your documents in a format they will cease supporting or providing software to read it within 2 years.
16. You will have to fear Microsoft might secretly without your consent or knowledge be collecting information about your calling habits for who knows what.
17. You will have to fear Microsoft might intentionally lock out competing programs.
18. You will have to "Continue" on every action, including every call you make or accept.
19. If you surf the internet with your phone (or even if you don't) you will have to fear contracting malware which will slow your computer down.
20. You will have to run an antivirus program as well as a firewall on your cellphone, however, with the firewall up, you will be unable to receive calls, and with the antivirus running, you will be unable to accept text messages or file transfers from trusted friends.
    
21. You will have to learn a new phone, interface, and location of settings every two years when Microsoft 'rewrites' their phone from 'scratch' and breaks all compatibility with old phone files (ex phonebooks).
22. Your phone will be prettier than the iPhone, will look much like the iPhone, but will actually do less.
23. Your phone will tell Microsoft whenever a program crashes, so Microsoft can make it crash more elegantly next time.
24. Your phone will require regular tune ups to keep it performing at peak speed.
    
25. Your phone will require you to download a new version of Windows Media Player every time you change your ring tone, so you can't use the ringtone you purchased on third-party devices or other phones you may own.
26. Every time you change cell towers (when moving down the road), you will receive a "new hardware found" message.
27. If you go into roaming, the phone will try to reinstall everything over again.
28. Sound memos will either be stored in large wave format, or a Microsoft DRM'ed sound format, tying the memos to that phone and only allowing you to listen to it if Microsoft gives you permission.
29. Images taken with the built in camera will be stored in Microsoft's mdi format which can only be read by Microsoft programs.
    
30. You will have to press the Start button to turn it off.
    

Password 'Security'

I am continually finding myself more and more annoyed by admins, websites, etc that force you to make a 'secure' password. Now don't get me wrong, I am security conscious, and I applaud efforts to prevent easily guessed passwords, but making password requirements such as "must contain 1 uppercase and 1 lowercase letter and 1 number" are the most frustrating.

Why? Well, because it forces you to have 37 different passwords, guaranteeing you will forget it or write it down, thus defeating the 'security'. Furthermore, by making rigid requirements, they also limit what a brute force attack would have to go through to find the password. Strongly recommending such requirements would be better than forcing the user to write down the password on a stickynote.

I like GNU's password 'requirements' of "this isn't a secure password, are you sure?"

Serving who?

This article makes me mad. And I'm not even affected by it! Virginia is now charging the custodial parent (i.e. the parent owed) a $25 fee to help the parent (who obviously needs the child support or they wouldn't care) to 'help' collect the owed child support.

Justice?

Here is a better (and much more practical!) idea: all deadbeat parents in the state would have their license revoked until they pay the child support due, or at least work out a payment plan, AND they pay the $25 fee for forcing the state to go after them, and they also pay the full and normal fee associated with loosing and reapplying for their license.

Now, this plan won't help much with deadbeat parents out of state (or who suddenly decide to move out of state, but with a little encouragement, the other states might be willing to implement similar plans. I mean, if the Passport office can recoup money from deadbeat parents, surely the states can use similar means to get the owed money back.

Honestly, what deadbeat parent doesn't need a driver's license? Justice should be served, not padding pockets. JUSTICE!

Google StreetView

I just noticed Google released a new feature on Google Maps. It appears to me it was released less than an hour ago even. [Correction: Google StreetView has apparently been out for a couple days now. Thanks you Ilker from The Thinking Blog] Reviewing it I think Google is off to a great start. Admittedly, there is still a long way to go, but it is a glimmer of what is to come, and what can be done.

Presently, the images are clear only to a few feet at any detail, i.e. it appears each shot is equivalent to about a 3Megapixel camera; you can make out faces on the side of the road if they were standing 2 steps from the vehicle. On one hand, for privacy concerns, this is a good thing for those who were passed. On the other hand, detail is desirable. I will note however, that this is obviously an early stage in the feature, as only a few hundred roads in major cities are available, and these are primarily major roads. Given a few more years, I think it is certain Google will be able to obtain higher quality images and of more roads, probably even your road soon.

Right now what you see has a lot to be desired. You can get a good idea of the road if you are a visual driver, but with trucks on the side of the road and people walking around, a lot is blocked. Later, I speculate Google will recapture many of the busy streets so they can edit out people, vehicles, and construction. Yet having people and vehicles in the picture gives the images a life of sorts, makes them interesting, rather than appearing to be ghost towns/cities. The images as they are presently, with people in them also gives a glimpse into the buzz and the life of the city or town.

There are other interesting possibilities opened up with the new StreetView. With all the images captured thus far (and soon to be captured), Google can create 3-D views of buildings beside the road, as they have captured at least 3 angles of the building on one face. Google can use this 3d model and the location to place a label, ex: Lincoln Memorial or the US Mint (neither are presently viewable in StreetView). Furthermore, as Google has phone listings and website listings, they can link the phone number or website to the view of the building. Imagine you are driving past a shop that has had problems with vandalism in the past and you heard in the news the owner is offering a reward for information that helps stop the vandalism. You drive past and notice a vandal in the act, but you don't know remember phone number. You grab your phone, go to Google Maps, and select your current location (provided by GPS; this is something privacy advocates hate but it appears rather inevitable, and Google will love it as it aids in providing their context based advertising), and you are able to get the phone number (and even the linked news article regarding the reward) and call the shop owner to report the vandalism in progress, and even take a picture for proof (with the built in camera in your phone).
Alternatively, you are driving around a city you have never been before, and Google Maps is providing you live view of your step by step driving directions (which is accounting for the construction and accidents provided by Traffic), and you are able to go to the museum while your kids are surfing the website planning what all you they want to do there--and your decision to go was spur of the moment. After you picked up your kids, you just told Google Maps you wanted to go to the Nature museum, and Google knew where that was based on your location and the data available.

And the nice thing? All this is available now, or could be in coming months.

Outrageous idea

I've been thinking about this idea on and off for a while, but now I think I'll publicize it a bit.

People are competing to build the largest structure all the time. We awe at the incredible feats engineers accomplish. We become more confined in our homes and communities. We try (or so the claim is given) to be more environment friendly.

All around me there are suburbs popping up, where the people only have to walk a block or two to have most everything. We dream of one day living on Mars, at first in a giant community, and later, possibly on the planet. For long periods of time, there have been thriving communities underground, in caves, etc. Space is slowly becoming in demand as populations grow. How large can a city get?


The Mile Cube. Yes, a cube that is a mile wide, a mile long, and a mile high. Or for non US folk, that is 1.6 kilometers, approximately 264 floors. It would be a huge feat to accomplish, but is it an unrealistic idea? Would people move in?

First of all, this idea is quite challenging to wrap your mind around. If you have seen skyscrapers up close, the world's tallest is around 1800 ft or 620 meters high. A mile is 5280 feet or 1600 meters.

What challenges would there be? Well, I'm not an engineer or anything of the sort, so I am undoubtedly missing a lot, but here are some I see:

Cost. It costs in the billions of dollars to build current skyscrapers, so something 4 times higher and at least 20 times wider, the cost is going to be in the trillions. Not even Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world can afford that presently.

Escape. What happens if there is a fire? Fire regulations will definitely play a huge role in if it is even possible. The building could be made of non-combustibles, but that only limits the damages.

Gases. Fresh air, stale air, carbon dioxide, other gases (methane), they all need to be moved up to 0.5 miles, and quickly. Otherwise, they need to be filtered, and recirculated. Trees could be planted in the building, but they can only convert so much so quickly. Perhaps having every other floor growing nothing but plants would help offset things.

Cooling. Keeping the temperature regulated in such a structure would be quite the challenge. Heating wouldn't be as much of an issue, as electronics and people give off heat. Even the coldest weather outside would be of little to no consequence as the building would be large enough heat from the inside would readily keep things warm. Cooling can't be done in the traditional manner--each home having a cooling unit, nor in the commercial manner--the business having a huge cooling unit. It would probably take most of a floor to house the equipment to keep the temperature cool.

Structural support. I imagine having a cube rather than a skyscraper is easier in some respects, but the building would weigh in the millions of tons, so assuming no foundation issues (which may be assuming far too much), the supports for the building would have to be massive, or new ways of supporting things would have to be devised. Think biology.

Layout. Each housing area would have to be close to a job and other necessities.

Transportation. In a compact city like this, gas emitting vehicles would be out of the question, as they would more than double the required gas evacuation. So it would need a all electric transport, or people walking, or biking. However, as some people might want large items such as refrigerators, pianos, etc in their 'house', there would have to be some sort of transport available capable of carrying large and/or heavy items. And keep in mind, this would be up and down as well as to and fro. The transport system would have to transport all of the inhabitants at a rate comparable with present speeds. And none of this even addresses getting out. The structure could be sunk 0.5 miles (half way) to ensure foundational stability, and also to ensure the furthest anyone has to travel to get out is 0.7 miles (0.5 miles up and over if they are in the bottom or top center).

Utilities. Electricity, water, phone, internet... all of those would need to be brought in and taken out, or would need to be addressed in 'house'.

Health. Would the engineers be able to effectively replace natural sunlight with artificial sunlight? Would they be able to offer healthy fresh air indoors? Would they be able to prevent or minimize disease spread (and, even pests who carry disease)?

Willingness. Would people be willing to live in a giant building they would probably never leave, or only leave maybe once a year. Would people be willing to have indoor parks, artificial sunlight, no or artificial breezes, and no weather?

Again, I undoubtedly missed some major things, but most, if not all of them could be addressed, with the possible exception of the cost. But is a single building comfortably housing approximately 3.5 million people in 1 cube mile going too far? If not,
what is to stop us from going 2 miles instead? We don't have to go up or down this much, but we could go out by this. We could have an airport on the top of such a building, and the planes could almost have no runway as they would be high enough up, they would simply need to drop off the building to gain airspeed. Of course no one would like this idea, they prefer long airstrips. But the room is there for a decent airport. Is there any benefit to something like this? Well, cities are trying to deal with how compact they can get, how populated they can be, this allows for tremendous increases over present means.

One day, we may be living like this, but that day is probably beyond our lifetime.

Bribes for the recalcitrants?

In a news article today, Microsoft is trying to bribe your IT guys at work to make you use Microsoft Live Search, as it is rather dead. For those who prefer another search engine (Say, maybe Google?!?! Though Yahoo is higher in rank than Microsoft), Microsoft sees such people as "recalcitrant'. Yeah. Recalcitrant, according to dictionary.com " Stubbornly resistant to and defiant of authority or restraint."

Yeah, Microsoft (or at least Mr Sohn who was speaking for Microsoft) thinks people who use a *ahem* superior product are defiant of authority (uhm, who?) or defiant to restraint. Makes you want to rush out and use Microsoft products, no?


In better news... EMI is seeing the light! You will soon be able to buy *high quality* *drm-FREE* music. And by high quality, think 256Kbps over the normal 128.


And Dell is soon to be selling Linux pre-installed. Hopefully for a lower price (no Microsoft tax).

The future is looking pretty good for consumers in charge, and a bit poor for Microsoft: Search is dead, DRM is dead, and tax is dead. Vista was still-born, and with all of it's DRM focused kernel and media player, and other performance/compatibility, etc issues... And the XBox is still selling at a loss (hardware), but with DRM dead, the point of locking down the hardware becomes rather, ... moot. Might Microsoft be on their last chapter in history? Time will tell...

Annoyed!

When I set up Automatic updates on my Windows XP Pro machine, I chose to 'download and prompt me to install'. I did this because I know some updates Microsoft pushes break things, and I prefer not to have to scratch my head over what happened, and then suddenly realize it is post 'Patch Tuesday'.

For the past few months (or is it longer... I've lost track), whenever I get notification of updates being ready, I click of to install. However, after dutifully installing updates, my sound mixer has gone MIA. A simple reboot fixes the issue. But wasn't XP touted as "fewer reboots"?

Ok, let me explain (seeing as this is my first post)...
I am a bit of a power user. I normally have Gaim open and at least one chat, and Firefox with dozens of tabs. And that is what I almost always have open. I have more open that changes from time to time. And, yes, I am into open source, Linux and FreeBSD even. But I have also used Windows since 3.11. I can do near anything a savy user can do in either of said OSes.

So, whenever I install updates from Microsoft, I, like everyone else get these annoying popups demanding I restart my computer every 10 minutes despite my constant click of "remind me later". There are supposed to be ways to increase the 10 minutes to several hours, but they haven't worked for me. Instead, I found System Internals' Process Explorer (now Microsoft owned) nicely shows what svchost is running, so you know which svchost is running the windows update program (wuaclt? I don't pay much attention). I found it works quite well to kill the program, and the annoying popups stop. Simple. So I go about my merry business until I am ready to restart. Keep in mind, computers are about serving the user after all.

That works fine. No issues. However, while going about my merry business, I notice sound does not work. Investigation reveals I have no mixer installed. But I was listening to audio with no issues just before the update occurred! A simple reboot has been found to resolve this issue. But again, XP was supposed to reduce the number of reboots needed. My Linux machine (running Fedora Core 5 ftr, and needs to be updated to FC6 or Gentoo) doesn't have to be rebooted except when I alter the kernel. Hmm. And this Linux machine IS my primary machine. Similarly my FreeBSD machine (6.1), which isn't used as actively, but is still used doesn't need rebooted unless I need to alter the kernel. Yet my XP machine needs to be rebooted at least once a month, if for no other reason, "to get sound" back.

True, I could refuse the updates, as I don't use IE (and I refused the IE7 update), and I don't go to sites that pose a danger, and I am properly firewalled, etc. But updates are supposed to fix problems. At least they do with Linux/BSD. Yet consistently, Microsoft updates break something forcing me to reboot, which is usually a hassle. Windows still doesn't re-open tasks that were previously opened, which Linux (KDE) does. So, why exactly does updates intentionally break the sound card? Well, that is an issue I need to look into next time, as I failed to this time. However, upon investigating post-update, I had more issues.

Yes, the updates are almost certainly to the Digital 'Rights' Management code to ensure I don't pirate music. Not that I listen to music really anyway.



I have IE Tab in Firefox. I use IE once in a blue moon due to some websites forcing me to. I intentionally set IE to be very annoying and request permission for everything it is requested (by the site) to do. That includes accepting cookies and running javascripts. I know I had this enabled a month or two ago. Yet, today when attempting to investigate what patches Microsoft admitted to have pushed down, I went to Microsoft's website and browsed to the security and updates section. I see they have recently left the straight html webpages on the site. I was surprised to note I was receiving no request for anything. I noted this yesterday, in fact when I was filling out an application that insisted I have IE (just why I use IE tab, for the few who have ridiculous requirements). Opening IE directly, I confirmed this. All my security settings were changed. Yet it is still set to the 'custom' I set it to. I do recall Microsoft trying to push IE7 on me recently, but that can't be related, can it? Nearly every setting I had in IE was altered to a much more permissive level than I would ever allow.


And during this, ... rant, Windows decided to drop the candy theme on the task bar. *Shrug* What's new? Windows being Windows. Needless to say, I'm thinking of dropping Windows completely in the near future. Cheaper, easier (for me), and less headache. Linux does everything I want anyway. If I need a Windows box, I have a (Legal!) copy running in a virtual machine. A little slow, but it works, and I can even roll it back if I need. Now there's an idea.

And, yes, I feel slightly better after having complained. Now to shut things down and reboot so I can have audio again. Or should I just format and install Linux. Tempting....


Edit: Strange. A Real Audio stream I had open before updating (internet radio--I do listen to music sometimes, just not often) still plays. It's other sound sources (in this case, google video in FireFox) that doesn't Volume Control still insists "There are no active mixer devices available".