Category → computer
The Cloud
There is a phrase that is being used more and more these days with reference to remote data storage over the Internet called “Cloud Computing” or “The Cloud” for short. This phrase is often referring to images we have all seen when someone draws a computer network. They often draw this cloud in the corner where a person’s network connects. This cloud is the Internet. Why do they call it a cloud? This can be answered by the unknown quantity that the Internet represents. The Internet has matured to a point that people are looking for more innovative ways to use it. This just happens to coincide with the dramatic drop in the cost of data storage whether by hard drives or flash drives.
Today a person can buy a hard drive the size that no one could have imagined five years ago for less than $100.00 in some cases. I have seen two terabyte drives at Wal-Mart. For those that are unfamiliar with a terabyte, I will have to give you a bit of computer background so you can get some perspective. Most of us have heard the term “bit” or “bits”. This is a term referring to a binary digit. Binary is nothing more than a different numbering system that is based on two instead of ten. Most of us know that our decimal numbering system goes up to nine before carrying over to another digit making “10”. Well binary is the same way except it goes up to one before carrying over another digit. For example you would count. 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 and so on. As you can see, it is based on two. Well a binary digit or bit is the means of measuring data. For each letter of the alphabet, or number to be expressed, it takes approximately eight binary digits of data, or a byte. One byte is eight binary digits and is the data required to store one letter of the alphabet, or ASCII character.
As you probably remember the metric system from high school a kilo is 1000 units of anything. A mega is 1,000,000 or one million. A Giga is 1,000,000,000 or one billion units. A tera is 1,000,000,000,000 or one trillion units of something. Since data storage is expressed in bytes, this storage of one terabyte is really approximately 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. This is an enormous number that is difficult visualize.
Now that data storage prices have dropped so much, there are companies offering data storage remotely over the Internet. In some cases they have services that back up your own data over the Internet in small increments while your Internet is idle. As we have seen with services like Google Docs, and Windows Live Sky Drive, these services are becoming mainstream. There are benefits to this because a person may have critical photos, music, or videos on their computer that would be a tragedy if lost. By storing things remotely, it helps keep them from being lost if a person’s house catches fire or hit by a tornado. I have been doing this for quite some time with my photos. I have more than 20,000 photos on my computer and currently over 7,000 of them are stored on Flickr.com.
They refer to this activity as cloud computing and has become a standard term. The problem is that I am not an ordinary person and have a difficult time seeing the Internet when people say “The Cloud”. I have two teenage sons that often do things like pass gas as they walk through the house and then tell you that you just walked through their cloud as you walk through the room. Since this has happened many times, I tend to think unpleasant things when people refer to the cloud. This is not a good thing because I am around computer enthusiasts on a regular basis. find myself reaching for the Febreeze every time they start talking about cloud computing. Am I too far gone? I still hold out hope that one day I will get passed the trauma. I would like to suggest changing the name so that I can engage in computer speak without thinking of toilets. How about calling it “The Internet”?
I know that most people from more refined backgrounds are thinking to themselves about a thunderstorm, or even a Spring day when someone refers to clouds. I guess I could use some more refinement but I am what I am. It was destined to happen when I was an aircraft maintenance person in the Air Force for many years. If you have ever been one you probably know what I am talking about. Being in the military requires you to have some thick skin and have a sense of humor to deal with the long hours of working on the flight line in less than ideal conditions. I guess I am doomed to being an unrefined Neanderthal incapable of rational thought. I need to accept who I am. Can I keep my computer though?
At a Complete Loss
I have posted about my Internet connection problems several times and nothing seems to fix the problems. Over the last several years I have been plagued with losing Internet connection repeatedly. In some cases I would not lose connection completely but I would lose connection to the web. All other Internet applications would remain connected while the web would lose connectivity. My wife and I with frustration have changed Internet providers from Cable to DSL and then back to Cable. We have been through four routers and six computers. There has been eight computers if you count the laptops. The problem is the same in every configuration. I am becoming convinced that my problems are infrastructure. I live in a house that is 60 years old and in a neighborhood that has many large trees that have grown out of control into the above ground power lines. Both Cable and phone lines are on these same power poles that are among trees. We live in an area that consistently has high winds most of the time. I am beginning to think that many of our connectivity issues are a direct result of these aging power, cable, and phone lines being exposed to large trees and high winds.
I have a moderate level of experience in trouble shooting computers and the Internet. When Internet is lost, most technical support will encourage you to turn off your router, modem, and all connected computers. They will have you turn on the modem, then then router, and then the connected computers. This is good advice and almost always works as most people that have had this problem will attest. Our problem is intermittent in nature but consistent in its repetitiveness. Over the last few years, we have changed modems, routers, and providers and the problem is never ending. I am hopeful that our move next year will help to alleviate these connection issues. Right now we are using a brand new cable modem and router. My router, D-Link DIR-825 802.11(n) Gigabit, is not even a week old. Our modem is a Motorola SBV-5222 and we have only had it for six months.The one noticeable improvement this router has resulted in is the auto reset. The Internet still loses connection but no longer seems to need us to restart the modem and router. It seems to restart itself within two minutes. When I am streaming video, the lost Internet is very annoying.
There are many reasons why I believe our problems are infrastructure. Over the years we have lost electric power many many times because trees have grown into the power lines and the wind has blown them into the wires. I have lost a monitor from a power surge that was a result of a loose ground wire on the power line behind my house. The local power company came to my house and narrowed the issue to that connection. To give you an idea of how this works I will explain. When that wire comes loose it is akin to turning on the water faucet and putting your thumb over the hose. When you take your thumb off the hose you will get a sudden surge of water pressure that shoots the water with a higher force. The same can be said of your power lines. The voltage is the pressure that pushes the electricity through the wires. The actual electrons (current) flowing through the wire is like the water going through the hose. When the current is slowed, it increases pressure (voltage). This sudden surge of voltage can be reduced with surge protectors but those do not work in our old neighborhood. Surge protectors rely on using the home’s ground. These old homes only have the old two wire power wires in the home and do not have a good ground for the surge protector to use.
I may be way off on my assumption but this is what I have narrowed it down to. We have changed every piece of hardware in the home network. The only thing left is infrastructure. I really hope that when we move, it can fix this problem. I talk to others and find I am the only one that has these problems, at least to this extent. If anyone can think of other issues that I failed to think of, please, by all means, let me know. We have had this problem intermittently over the last ten years that we have lived in this house. I am not too proud to accept assistance that can fix this problem.
Internet Issues (cont)
You may remember last week that I posted about my Internet Issues with losing my connection all the time. The strange thing about my problems is that I would lose ‘web’ access while my other applications would stay connected. I was with AT&T using DSL on a network with a wired and wireless router. The wireless router is being used as an access point set up as a pass through. I am now using Cox Internet with the same configuration. I took a picture above of my current system after the changes. The big difference in the above system is the new cable modem on the left. I checked the speed on Speakeasy’s Speed test and the download speed was 23847 kbps and the upload speed was 3644 kbps, fairly impressive.
Unfortunately my problem has not gone away. I have more than one router and I have tried both of them with the same results. When the system is working, it works very well. The problem is that I have times where my web access just fails to load after timing out. When it happens, it does it to all connected computers. It is clear that my problem is with the router because it works smooth with the computer connected directly to the modem. I am just not sure what is wrong with the router settings. If anyone else has had this problem before and has any suggestions, please let me know. You can either post here, or email me directly at paul [dot] mccord at gmail (dot) com. This is quite frustrating and I am very confused. The router is set up with default settings for a cable modem with the exception of certain ports being forwarded to specific computers. This is absolutely necessary because I have a ham radio linking system that uses several ports. I also have several programs that are used on specific computers that use special ports. All of our computers are set to static IP addresses so that port forwarding is possible.
I guess the single characteristic that makes this so interesting is that we do not lose Internet connection on our other applications such as Skype, and other audio streaming programs. It is only the web that is being affected. Also this seems to happen when we are accessing the web simultaneously on more than one computer. I know the web uses port 80 and so I am inclined to think that multiple accesses to the same port are confusing the router. Usually if I stop all web access for about two full minutes, the problem goes away. I do not even have to reboot the router, or the modem. Does this sound familiar? I am very interested in any suggestions others may have. What really gets me is that it happens on two separate routers. Also it does not happen all the time. For example at this moment I am trying to put stress on my system by streaming IRLP audio, watching Hulu.com on another computer, watching TWiT on another computer all at the same time. It is running flawlessly at this moment. I am very concerned about what is causing this because when it happens, my web is stopped cold. There is no access at all and in some cases, it is very slow. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
I’m Still a PC
Am I the only one that has noticed all the Apple hysteria these days? If you turn on the television, watch any sitcom, or movie you will see everyone with a Mac. If you go onto social networking sites or blogs around the world you will find similar sentiments. This has become another follower story similar to the Google follower story of about two years ago. Remember when Google was the equivalence of the second coming of Christ? This is what is happening with Apple these days and it is almost nauseating.
Let’s have some sanity in this argument. Apple products are just plain overpriced and I refuse to use them when they continue to be that way. Even their Itunes software is not very attractive. The iPhone is off the charts too expensive and so is ANY iPod. I mean seriously… You can buy virtually any mp3 player with more storage space for 50 to 75% of the iPod price. The Apple advertising story is to say that to use a PC means that you are vulnerable to attack with virus’ worms, or any sorts of malware. The truth is that Microsoft still carries 80+% of the market while Apple only has 10%.
Think in terms of a terrorist since most virus authors are just that in their own way. If you had to blow something up and weapons were very expensive or time consuming wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on a target that would do the most damage to the most people? In other words authors of malware and the like target Microsoft because they are the most used, not because they are the least secure. This is a message that Apple will never tell you, nor will their followers. They only have the appearance of being more secure because they do not have enough market share to make cracking them worth while.
Despite the never ending barrage of attacks from the Apple loving, Microsoft haters Microsoft still makes very good products. The small exception of the initial release of Vista is hardly the rule. Microsoft Vista has actually become a very nice operating system from what they were in the beginning. This is not an attempt to attack Apple for making bad products but rather an attempt to combat some of the over zealous hysteria around their overpriced products.
Many of the people that I hear swearing allegiance to Apple are the same people that I use to hear bashing Microsoft for their proprietary ways. The ironic thing about all this is that Apple is far more proprietary than Microsoft is. They will not even allow you to use their software on hardware that they did not make. Of course this can be done but not without violating the end user license agreement (EULA). I watched four movies this weekend and everyone of them had Apple Macintosh computers on their desks. I watched a Christmas episode of House just yesterday and he was not only using a Mac but was holding an iPhone. I am not saying this is bad for a person to use their products but rather to say that Hollywood’s portrayal of Apple is that everyone uses them and everyone wants them. This is simply not true and I am one of them. I have zero desire to purchase any products by Apple and I know I am not the only one.
In all honesty I have to hand it to Apple for making some pretty good products lately and I have nothing against them other than their pricing for similar PC products. The thing that bothers me is the disproportionate love fest with their products among the tech world and Hollywood. The tech world mainly for the hypocrisy of bashing Microsoft for being proprietary while their love child Apple does the very same thing. Hollywood for their continued habits of trying to create spin while they are supposed to be entertaining. They do this all the time with their subtle hints at liberal slanted topics and social issues. Instead of just doing a performance to entertain which is what their audience wants to see they try to use this monopolistic platform to try to shape people’s minds. I guess it is no secret that I am no fan of the entertainment industry.
I have been a computer enthusiast for more than 20 years and I still love them. I am no expert with computers, rather an enthusiast that loves learning about new gadgets. I claim no expertise in any way but I have been around long enough to see how trends come and go and this Apple hysteria is just another example of groups of people following the crowd paying twice what a product is worth just because of the perceived “coolness” factor. Somehow these days it is seen to make you cool if you own a Mac despite paying a higher price for the same product. If you are in the “IN” crowd you think this makes perfect sense while those not in the “IN” crowd see it as lunacy.
An analogy that could compare would be the guy that drives down your street playing the stereo so loud that the bass shakes the dishes in your home. To the deaf guy in the car and his buddies, this is so cool that it gives them chills to see people look in their direction. To them this is the height of attention and in their eyes everyone is looking at them with envy. To the people outside the car looking in the same situation is seen with disgust. The person inside the car is looked upon as a person with not enough brain power to save his own hearing. The same situations seen from two completely different perspectives. The Apple Mac buyer walks around with his overprices Mac with chills as people glance his way. He sticks his chest out knowing that everyone that glances his way is looking upon him with envy. To all those that are in agreement with him they support his lack of budgeting skills and cheer him on. Those others “NON COOL” types look upon him with pity. They see this poor soul as one that was so caught up in pleasing his friends that he paid twice the price for a product than he had to. They get down on one knee just before bed to ask God to forgive them for they know not what they do. 
I know I know… That is a little over the top but I sometimes find that a little tongue in cheek sarcasm can be used to illustrate a point. To all my Apple friends you are in my prayers .
Restrictions at Work
As many of you may know I have posted about how the government does everything the hard way. Everything we do is usually impacted by a new rule or policy that makes our jobs harder. Over the last two days at work we have received this message or some rendition of it on our computers. This is basically telling us that we cannot use any removable media on our computers at work any more. This is going to virtually shut our office down in the short term. My office produces Power Point presentations daily. We take engineering photographs to display issues that are coming up. With this new policy we cannot unload our work related photographs or reports. Sometimes we deal with Excel spreadsheets that are so large that the government email will not allow it to go through. This leaves us with our memory stick to move files from one computer to another. We do this every day many times a day.
Although they did not post the reason for this policy, it is quite clear why they did this. It is my opinion that their reasoning is two fold and that is to prevent the spread of virus’ to government computers. The other reason is to keep people from taking restricted information outside of the government. I took this screen shot this morning because I was just amazed at these ridiculous blanket policies. We have the capability to scan these forms of removable media to check for virus and worms. There is technology that is available that can encrypt this media that must be authenticated by our government common access cards (CAC). This really should not amaze me at all because this is typical of the government to create these blanket policies to cripple everyone to punish a couple. Instead of dealing with the trouble makers they shut everyone down from doing their assigned duties.
To give you an idea of the waste that goes on in the government. If a person works in maintenance they are required to get their technical manuals or Technical Orders (TO) online. They must print them out each time they want to work on a piece of equipment. These printouts are only good for one day so they must be shredded and then reprinted the next day. This means that litterally thousands of sheets of paper are printed and shreded every day at my work. This is mandated by law. If a person is caught using a printout from yesterday then they are subject to disciplinary actions. This is typical for the government and keeps most people worked up over it all the time. I am curious how this new policy of no removable media is going to play out as I have already heard that our colenel was even complaining about it and if it is true, he has every reason.
There is not a day that goes by that almost everyone in our office is required to create an electronic report of some kind. These reports or presentations are almost always presented in a conference room on an overhead projector via PowerPoint or some other software. I am curious how this will work out since no one will be able to get their files from their computers to the conference room. One might think that we could just email it to ourselves on the other computer. That is virtually impossible since to set up our Outlook Exchange server requires administrative privilages. We would have to call the IT help desk for each person that wants to do a presentation on every computer. Web base email is out of the question because they have blocked access to all web mail accounts including Cox.net or SBCglobal. No Yahoo, No Google, No Hotmail. No social networking sites. They have even blocked access to even use CD-R’s. To the average citizen this may seem a little over kill but the the government worker this is an average day. You can add to this frustration that I received a delinquent travel voucher notice this afternoon for a temporary duty (TDY) that I took three weeks ago. By law we are required to submit our travel voucher within five working days of return. Our second level supervisor just signed it yesterday even though I submitted it the day I returned. I fulfilled my duties immediately and my second level supervisor sits on it for weeks and then I get a delinquent notice. This is typical of an average day. I think I have beat a dead horse long enough. I just had to share this information to get it off my chest.
UPDATE: 21 Nov 2008
Thanks to KC5FM for pointing out the US-CERT web site’s warning about a malicious code being spread through USB Flash drives. I certainly hope that a fix is discovered soon as work has really been hampered. You can read the article here…
http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#malicious_code_spreading_through_usb
The Problem with Linux
Anyone that knows me knows the I have long been an advocate of Linux. I have dabbled with various brand names such as Debian, RedHat, Ubuntu, Suse since living in Alaska back in 1997. I love the feel and abilities of Linux in so many ways. I also think it is a good thing when there is competition. I have been running two Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) nodes since 2002. I have had some hiccups in the running them over the years but for the most part, everything has been smooth.
The problems that I have run across more often than not are attitudes of superiority to Microsoft and other products. This is not an isolated case either because it has happened as recently as this morning. Along with the arrogant attitudes is a deafness to what the customer wants. Customers stay with Microsoft products because they work, regardless of whether they ever where a monopoly. I find that most Linux users’ sole purpose in using Linux is their hatred for Microsoft. They have their noses so high in the air that they cannot see what the customer wants. A customer wants to log on to the computer, click on a button and get their work done. The customer wants their programs to work on the computer and not have to be a computer programmer to run it.
One of the problems with Linux is there are very few standards. There are so many version from many different vendors that no one has a standard. RedHat is about the furthest along on their standards than anyone else. They have the .rpm RedHat package manager that several other distributions use. Others use Debian features. Virtually no one has created a standardized means to download a file, and click to install like Windows does. That is one of the biggest inconveniences of Linux. Add to that, if you ask someone who uses Linux why they do not have that, you are likely to be met with a lecture on the benefits of the command line. The customer is not interested in the command line no matter how beneficial it may be. The customer is only interested in getting something done and is not interested in computer programming to get it done. They constantly point out the security holes in Windows and how it is attacked. They speak of the security of Linux and the lack of attacks. This is because someone cracking software is likely to put their time and resources to cracking the system with the largest market share. I am convinced that if Linux had the same market share, it would be targeted with the same intensity that Microsoft’s products are.
I cannot tell you how many times I have been met with condescending remarks on the IRLP Yahoo Group for asking a simple question. It is almost as if it is in their genes. If you do not know the answer already, then obviously this hobby is not for you. Just today, I was met with someone telling me they could not access our streaming audio that is designed to run on Windows Media Player. This individual was using Winamp. He lectured us on the virtues of Winamp over Window Media Player. Remember the anti Microsoft attitudes I told you about? I did not have the heart to tell him the beloved Winamp he boasts is owned by America Online (AOL). They are is big in proprietary software as Microsoft ever was. It sound a little bit like hypocrisy to me.
Again, I really do like Linux and hope it flourishes in the market but I am skeptical it ever will. The reason I am skeptical is because of the prevailing attitudes in the Linux community. They have such potential but lack one thing, and that is listening to the customer. In any business, listening to the customer is paramount to a success. I really do hope they finally hear and start going in that direction because Linux really is a treat to use.
Technorati Tags: Linux, RedHat, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Suse, IRLP
Dell Oklahoma City
I was out a few days ago and when I passed the Dell campus on S.E. 15th Street, near Portland, I stopped to take a few pictures. Below is the front entrance. I thought since we has a lot of rain this early summer, the green grass would really look good. Normally in July we are well into a drought and the grass it pretty much withered away.
This is the front of building A of the Dell complex. As you can see by the rear view mirror, this was taken inside the car.
Technorati Tags: Dell, Dell Computers, Oklahoma City, photography, digital photography
Another Format
I am sure most of you have heard the phrase “When it rains it pours”. Today I wanted to get a jump on writing a paper for my school work with very little success. It started out that I kept having visitors. Then my desktop computer kept locking up on me. This has been going on for a while but today I finally had all I can take. I formatted the hard drive and am still installing software. As most of you know this is a time consuming process.
I did get to see my dad and his new wife today. That was very nice and I took some pictures of them. If you are on my family list, you can look at them on Flickr here. I have it set up so that you can only see them if you are signed into Flickr and on my family list. This is because some people do not want their photos visible to the world. I usually try to honor their wishes if they tell me.
Speaking of pictures, the Zooomr website is still not up yet but they have a ustream video of Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate along with an online chat room so people can keep up to date while Kristopher Tate gets them back online. If you wan to know the details, go to their blog here. This has been an interesting story with their server crash and all the support to get them back online. It is almost like a movie where you really pull for the little guy to win. I have the laptop on there watching them now. I wish the best for them as they overcome the adversity of hardware failures. I have an account a Zooomr here and I usually host my blog photos there.
Technorati Tags: Zooomr, Thomas Hawk, Kristopher Tate, Flickr, photography
Computer format
On this wonderful Memorial Day weekend I find myself formatting my wife’s computer for the sixth time. I tried five times this morning and then finally resorted to wiping the hard drive with Derik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN). Now I am installing the Windows for the sixth time. I was having boot errors even after using the manufacturer’s restore disk. I am 52% done with the sixth install.
While doing the install I just saw a huge wreck on NASCAR where Jeff Gordon got T-Boned going 200 miles per hour. It is a miracle he walked away on that. I am not a big NASCAR fan but just a casual sports fan.
Anyway, I am hopeful that my Windows install will go smoothly this time. She has been getting a virus indication on the virus scan for several weeks but I have been putting it off because I knew it would be a major job reinstalling all the software. It has been a very relaxing Memorial Day weekend so far. This is just what I needed since I have been so swamped and stressed out at work. Now that I got transferred back to my old shop, I got rid of a lot of that stress. Just in time for the summer session of my school to start next weekend. Oh well, life is good.
Technorati tags: Microsoft Windows, format, Derik’s Boot and Nuke, DBAN, Memorial Day