Computers

DD-WRT is pretty cool

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I’m setting up a network for someone and I had them buy a LinkSys WRT54GL, both because I have one and like it, and because I knew you could put DD-WRT on it.

What is DD-WRT?

When I took the stock WRT56GL up there and tried to make it do what I wanted, I was dissapointed. I wanted it to extend thier wired network and forward DHCP requests to their Microsoft Small Business Server. And maybe I’m dumb, but I couldn’t make it go.

Well, I just flashed the router with DD-WRT and man am I impressed! Talk about feature-rich! And right on the front configuration page is the option for DHCP forwarding. I think this is going to work out just great!

And a hat tip to Nate for turning me on to DD-WRT a while ago. I may just have to flash my WRT54GL because DD-WRT is so cool.

Computers

OpenFiler Performance Testing – Back to Square One

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Well, last night I discovered that my testing methodology was flawed and the results are all over the board.

Plus I changed the test configuration in the middle of the testing.

So, I’m going to backup and take another run at it.

I had run just one test per drive configuration and the results are weird. Then last night I ran multiple tests on one configuration and those results didn’t match the first test for that configuration.

And I upgraded the firmware on the IDE controller cards in the middle of the testing. D’oh.

So my new plan is this:

  • Upgrade the BIOS on the motherboard (if it needs it.)
  • Reset the PnP BIOS configuration after each controller card swap – I think this might have caused issues.
  • Run the test 10 times for each configuration and average the results. This should even out some of the whacky results I saw.
  • Not change the test configuration in the middle of the tests!

So it will take a bit to do all this. Maybe I can get it done this weekend. We’ll see.

Life

Time-Tracking and Productivity

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

It’s been a long time since I blogged about productivity (mine) and getting things done. I have been using my planner, but not as much as I should. I decided that part of the problem was that it was too small (the rings anyway) and that I needed a bigger one.

So as a reward to myself for at least continuing to use it in some manner I bought a nice red leather Franklin Covey binder on eBay for about $20. (This thing retails for about $90.) It’s got huge rings in it so I can stuff it full of pages.

I have loosely made a New Years resolution to try and get more organized in my work flow, on my desk at home (it’s a huge mess) and in my wood shop at home (another mess).

I have started by building a large wall mounted tool box to store all my woodworking hand tools in. That should clean up a lot of my shop mess.

Then I need to work on my desk (I’ve decided to eBay or throw away most of the crap on it.)

For the productivity end I have decided to re-read the books I have read and finish the ones I started before. I’ve also started looking at the web sites I found in the past and have discovered that Dave Seah has been a busy little beaver! He’s got some nifty looking new forms to try out for scheduling my day and getting things done!

I really like the new Emergent Task Planner, and am going to play with it a bit. If I really find it useful I’ll make a version in the classic size so I can use it in my planner.

He has a nice series that he calls The Printable CEO. I’ll have to look over the rest of them again and see what might help me out.

My real problem is that I like to procrastinate. I’m lazy and I know it. I’d rather distract myself with other fun things than really buckle down and get things done.

So I need to get myself motivated. We’ll have to see how I manage that.

Politics

Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Here we go again.

President Bush demonstrates again that as far as he is concerned the Constitution is a piece of toilet paper.

WASHINGTON — President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

Full article

Tell me again why we shouldn’t impeach this pig-fucker?

Digital Photography

New Years Day Photos

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

We spent New Years Eve and New Years Day with Clan MacLeslie out in Marine on St. Croix.

They had two new kittens. These kittens are two of the most beautiful kittens I have ever seen.

Between the kittens and the new fallen snow I took a lot of pictures.

Here is an album of the best, and I’ll be posting some of them to my blog over the next few days.

Computers

Windows DRM is the ‘longest suicide note in history’

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

There are a couple of stories on The Register about the DRM in the new Windows Vista operating system.

Windows DRM is the ‘longest suicide note in history’

Vista’s Suicide Bomb: who gets hurt?

They make for interesting reading. They both refer to Peter Gutmann’s paper A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection:

Executive Summary
—————–

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

Executive Executive Summary
—————————

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history [Note A].

Also in the news, Bill Gates bounces the irony meter.

Updated! This has got to be the funniest thing I have ever read about DRM!

Note D: In order for content to be displayed to users, it has to be copied numerous times. For example if you’re reading this document on the web then it’s been copied from the web server’s disk drive to server memory, copied to the server’s network buffers, copied across the Internet, copied to your PC’s network buffers, copied into main memory, copied to your browser’s disk cache, copied to the browser’s rendering engine, copied to the render/screen cache, and finally copied to your screen. If you’ve printed it out to read, several further rounds of copying have occurred. Windows Vista’s content protection (and DRM in general) assume that all of this copying can occur without any copying actually occurring, since the whole intent of DRM is to prevent copying. If you’re not versed in DRM doublethink this concept gets quite tricky to explain, but in terms of quantum mechanics the content enters a superposition of simultaneously copied and uncopied states until a user collapses its wave function by observing the content (in physics this is called quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox). Depending on whether you follow the Copenhagen or many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, things then either get wierd or very wierd. So in order for Windows Vista’s content protection to work, it has to be able to violate the laws of physics and create numerous copies that are simultaneously not copies.

Windows Vista will not be getting installed in my house. I’ll teach the kids to use Linux first (which I arguably should be doing anyway.)