Author: sean

From a recent email spam – that was sorta funny…

Scenario 1:

Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck’s gun rack.

1957 – Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his new shotgun to show Jack.

2009 – School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2:

Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school…

1957 – Crowd gathers.. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2009 – Police called and SWAT team arrives — they arrest both Johnny and Mark.. They are both charged them with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3:

Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.

1957 – Jeffrey sent to the Principal’s office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again..

2009 – Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario 4:

Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1957 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.

2009 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5:

Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 – Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.

2009 – The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6:

Pedro fails high school English.

1957 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2009 – Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro’s English teacher . English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7:

Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed..

1957 – Ants die.

2009 – ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents — and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny’s dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

I recently began a quest to replicate my house data with a hosting service so if my house goes up in a fire I still have my data elsewhere. The utility that seems to work the best for this is called rsync, and is available on most flavors of Unix, including Apple’s OS X. Why is it good?  Well, rsync talks to the remote host and compares file meta-data like modified times, checksums, etc. to determine if a file needs to be transmitted.  It can handle partial file retransmission which is very nice if your dealing with large files.  It’s much more efficient than other methods that clumsily send all data over the line to have the destination server determine if the data should be discarded or not.  Here’s an example of the command I use (disk1 is a directory with a bunch of directories and files):

superbooky:Sean$ rsync -P -z -a -v -e "ssh -l sshuser"           \
                       --partial --delete-after --max-delete=500 \
                       /Volumes/disk1 bubba.com:~/disk1

While the command switches look scary, they really aren’t that bad. Here’s the explanation:

-P = Display

-z = Compress the data stream

-a = Archive mode – enables switches -rlptgoD
recurse dirs, copy symlinks, preserve permissions:mod times:group:owner:special files

-v = Increase verbosity

-e “ssh -l sshuser” = Run rsync through ssh for encrypted transfers

–partial = Leave partial files on the destination side.  This is to allow rsync to simply continue the transfer if a transmission interuption occurs. If you have large multi-GB files this is invaluable.

–delete-after = Delete any files on the destination that were deleted locally after all files have been replicated rather that during the replication.

–max-delete=500 = If rsync starts it’s deletion and goes more than 50 files, exit with an error.  This is a safegaurd in case something weird happens.

Using windows?  Sorry there’s no simple equivalent that is just available.  You’ll need to install software to get this type functionality

Last year HP Labs was able to create the long theorized electrical element, the Memristor.  While most people have not heard anything about the memristor, it will soon change the whole face of our electronics world.  The Memristor was a theoretical element in electronics that was postulated in the late 1960’s and was finally created in 2008.  Our entire electronics work today is only based on the other 3 elements – Resistor, Capacitor, and Inductor.

Why should you care?

Imagine your next computer with 10 terabytes of RAM, with no hard drive and no need to “load” programs.  Imagine the same computer powered off without loosing any information, requiring no voltage draw and at a fraction of the size of the smallest computers today – heck I could have described the iPhone of the future.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Analog processors, extremely fast crossbars, and others are on the near horizon. 20-50 years?  No.  I’m talking about the next 2-5 years.

Here’s a few links regarding the memristor:

• Maintaining Moore’s law with new memristor circuits
• Memristor Wiki