By Justin James on
4/29/2008 10:03 AM
These guys put together the "Robopault", a catapault using a giant robotic arm to sling bowling balls quite a distance with fairly high accuracy:
http://www.manapotions.com/robopult.html
I know, it's a bit old (I found this in January, and kept forgetting to post it), but anyone who hasn't seen this should see it. It's the steampunk "build it yourself ethos" applied to construction equipment.
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By George Ou on
4/29/2008 2:02 AM
It's been a while since I've put out a PC build list so I'm going to start with a value edition with an embedded NVIDIA graphics motherboard and Intel dual-core CPU. Note that this is more than powerful enough for any media center or office computer and even some casual low-end graphics gaming. It's a nice small computer that's designed to be very quiet and fast.
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By George Ou on
4/28/2008 11:51 PM
Nathan McFeters has written one of the best explanations I've seen about the latest rash of SQL injection attacks at my old security blog Zero Day. Nathan took the opertunity to point out another serious hole in the PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards which allow vendors to skip web application security audits if they simply buy a Web Application Firewall.
Earlier this year I had pointed out that the PCI security standards force you to run wireless LAN security schemes that put your laptops in more danger.
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By Justin James on
4/28/2008 5:08 PM
I have a like/dislike relationship with Microsoft. I am reluctant to call it "love/hate", since I don't really feel very strongly about them either way. I like an awful lot of their technologies (particularly .Net), and I dislike an awful lot of the details of those technologies. And it is the devil in those details that is Microsoft's biggest weakness.
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By George Ou on
4/28/2008 1:36 PM
I'd like to personally welcome Justin James and his new Critical Thinking blog to this site. I've known Justin for more than 2 years now professionally and personally and I can attest that his blog is aptly named. Justin is very knowledgeable on real world IT and cuts through the typical baloney you read in the main stream IT media. Even if you or I don't agree with him, you can appreciate his honesty and thoughtfulness. Justin is also more than happy to debate you. So, please join me in welcoming Justin James to ForMortals.com
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By Justin James on
4/28/2008 4:04 PM
 Hello to all! By way of introduction, my name is Justin James, and I have been writing over at TechRepublic for some time now. Over there, they like it if I keep my posts strictly related to programming and development, but the bulk of my days are spent with things that are distinctly not that... things like systems administration, network engineering, and so on. I was looking at my options for expanding my writing a bit, like it was originally at TechRepublic (when it was my personal blog, instead of me being one writer under "Programming and Development") when George started this u ...
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By George Ou on
4/28/2008 2:19 AM
 
There was a time when I was proud of my latest handiwork with my Polycarbonate AIO PC I built for my mother, but Jake von Slatt and Doc Datamancer are making me look like a little kid ...
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By George Ou on
4/27/2008 4:56 PM
The FCC hearing at Stanford University on April 17th 2008 was filled with inaccurate testimony from various witnesses. Since that testimony seems to be carrying significant weight both on Capitol Hill and in the media, I feel compelled to set the record straight. I have filed a copy of this letter on FCC docket 07-52.
Jon Peha testified that BitTorrent was like a telephone and implied that if a TCP reset is used by Comcast to stop a TCP stream, then that constituted a blockage of BitTorrent. Furthermore, Professor Peha implied through his telephone analogy that if BitTorrent is blocked, then the user must manually redial to reestablish the connection. These assertions are highly inaccurate ...
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By George Ou on
4/27/2008 4:01 PM
I just moved to a brand new hosting service from PowerDNN and everything looks a LOT faster and the support is much better. Unfortunately, that meant I had to get a clean start which means I've lost all my data and user accounts. If you were one of the first 23 people who signed up for an account, please accept my apologies and recreate an account. I have manually re-entered all the blogs and the user comments.
My old service provider iHostASP.net was absolutely atrocious and my site was either excruciatingly slow or completely non-functional. The way iHostASP.net metered my bandwidth was also dubious since they were saying I used 1 GB in 4 days with only 25 users on my site as I'm getting started. I have no idea how those people counted but they would have forced me over my 10 GB cap. P ...
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By George Ou on
4/25/2008 4:00 PM
On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon till midnight, the service provider was having severe problems. Hopefully the problem has been PERMANENTLY resolved or I'm finding a new provider. I kind of hate to go to that trouble since I'd have to move all my user accounts over and all the other data in the SQL server. It appears that this service provider is very problematic from 4PM to 1AM Pacific Standard time. I'm looking for a new provider.
Asside from limitations like the lack of multi-category support and the lack of friendly URLs, there appears to be RSS issues with DotNetNuke. Whenever I add a blog in the sub category of Technology and Policy, only those entries show up in RSS.
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By George Ou on
4/25/2008 3:51 PM
I am on a panel this morning at the Center for Business and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center titled "Spectrum Policy: From the Foundations to the Future.Read More »
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By George Ou on
4/23/2008 3:19 PM
Intel's new sub-2.5 watt Atom CPU (codenamed Silverthorne) is showing it can run two process threads at the same time better than competing processors. The Atom's hyperthreading feature (in-order SMT) allows the single-core processor to be seen as two logical processors by an operating system. When both processors are used whenever more than one task is being performed in the computer, substantial gains in performance can be made.
According to these slides presented at IDF on page 17, the Atom is showing an whopping 39% performance gain on SPECint_rate2000 when running two process threads at a mere 17% increase in power consumption.
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By George Ou on
4/22/2008 3:18 PM
Qtpfsgui has got to be one of the coolest applications I've seen in a while. It's a free open source HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging application that anyone can download and use for free. It's similar in feature to Photomatix (very nice image samples here) which is a commercial HDR imaging application.
I played with Qtpfsqui by using my RAW images to fake the input sources by manipulating the F-Stop on the RAW images. Normal ...
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By George Ou on
4/22/2008 3:16 PM
Here are the slides I presented at the FCC hearing in Stanford and here’s a letter version I sent to the FCC which gives a much fuller explanation. While the letter is a long read (3000+ words), I really hope you take the time to read it since it gives you the full picture of what I was trying to present. Vontv.net has the event on video
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By George Ou on
4/9/2008 3:16 PM
I will be presenting a keynote in front of at least 700 Verizon managers plus additional industry partners at the Verizon Technology Forum this Friday on 4/11/2008 starting at 8:20 AM. Note that my title was written before news of my ZDNet departure so it's not updated yet. Here's an excerpt from EarthTimes.org:
"PALATINE, Ill. - (Business Wire) Verizon and OSP® Magazine today announced a stellar speaker lineup that will participate at the second annual exclusive Technology Forum to be held April 10-11, 2008, at the Hershey Lodge in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Speakers include: Day One Keyno
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