Month: March 2008

Rod Meldrum, president and CEO of High Country Gourmet Foods, with the stated mission of helping “many thousands of people prepare physically for the second coming of the Savior, through food storage,” is a man on a mission: to prove that the Book of Mormon is consistent with US geography and DNA evidence.

So far, his book/video tour has included LDS stake centers and ward buildings in St. George and Wellsville.

His interpretation of the events toward the end of the Book of Mormon, with a climactic battle near the Great Lakes region of what is now the United States, is consistent with LDS Traditionalist views. However, in recent years those Traditionalist views have been at odds with scientific evidence regarding DNA lineages of Native Americans which do not show any evidence of Jewish heritage. In light of this evidence, many LDS scholars have adopted a “limited geography theory” that the peoples spoken of in the Book of Mormon in fact inhabited only a small area of Central America. Meldrum’s standpoint puts him at odds with these LDS scholars. I will be interested in seeing how this plays out.

Simon Southerton, noted molecular biologist, author, and former Latter-day Saint, said in a forum posting:

…his interpretation of the DNA evidence; however, is deeply flawed. He evidently bases it largely on the presence of the X lineage, which occurs at it highest frequency in Algonquian tribes (Cree, Ojibwe, Cheyenne, Kickapoo, Shawnee etc.) from north eastern North America. There is an ancient version of the X lineage among the Druze from Israel. But a much more closely related X lineage has been found in the Altai from southern Siberia, the same population with the highest frequency of the A, B, C and D lineages.

I don’t pretend to fully understand that, but it seems that if I actually knew what I was talking about, I might be suspicious of the unlikely conclusions drawn by Meldrum as Southerton is.

What I find more interesting, though, is that if Meldrum’s findings were really consistent with science, wouldn’t he be touring talk shows and publishing in scientific journals rather than giving lectures to faithful Latter-day Saints in stake centers? I mean, finding abundant Hebrew DNA in Native American tribes would be a truly revolutionary development that would challenge current pre-Columbian history and science to the core.

We have some food storage in our really over-sized storage room from High Country Gourmet Foods, I think. The word “gourmet”, despite being in the name of the company, is not really something which appropriately describes food which can be stored indefinitely at room temperature. Similarly, the word “science”, despite being at the heart of Muldrum’s argument, is not really something which appropriately describes his apologetic campaign to the faithful.

I fired up my computer this morning and wanted to some some packet analysis to try to reproduce some behavior I’d seen on my network at work. Lo and behold, my computer was generating GOBS of traffic. Constant, bandwidth-sucking traffic that was affecting other computers on my tiny little 1.5mbit broadband connection.

First suspect: Viruses. GRISoft to the rescue! Nope, machine’s clean.

Next suspect: Bittorrent still running? Nope, nope, it’s not set up to turn on automatically, and it’s only used when downloading large stuff like, for instance, ISO images of the latest Linux distribution or the IRCHA 2007 DVD (legal download, you know).

But it sure looked like BitTorrent. I mean, the traffic was all UDP, and all coming from the same port on my machine and going TO the same port on my machine: udp port 21600.

I dug into Control Panel. I modified my firewall policies. The traffic continued unabated. Finally, I found a little applet in my control panel called “DNA” which was supposed to “accelerate” content on my behalf, and, according to the laughable description, would not affect my computer or network otherwise.

Yeah. Right. I could tell it was having a profound affect, and had been wondering why my network was always saturated, my laptop fan kept running all the time, and my other network communications — like backing up my web server — were running so slow.

Sorry, BitTorrent, I understand you guys are trying to go legit through this content-delivery service, but your DNA client is evil. Why?

1. It installs along with BitTorrent without explicitly being installed by the user.
2. You don’t describe what DNA is or what it does. When someone downloads BitTorrent, you just get a “Download BitTorrent with DNA Acceleration” link… and no description of what DNA Acceleration is supposed to do.
3. You use the full bandwidth of low-bandwidth subscribers without their consent. Sure, “consent” is buried somewhere deep within an End-User License Agreement that nobody reads.
4. There are no configurable options to throttle DNA. This alone would go a long way toward helping me feel better about helping you be legitimate. If I could say, for instance, you’re allowed to use 20 kilobits a second, maximum, I might feel better about running your software.
5. There are no configurable options to limit total amount of data transfer. Beyond a certain amount, I’m charged per kilobyte of data on my cell phone connection. If I connect through my mobile phone, DNA still begins sharing data with other people, saturating that little tiny pipe and costing me money.

So how can BitTorrent make DNA less evil? For starters, set some more user-configurable throttle and connection options in the control panel, like “enable DNA when I’m on this connection, and disable on this other one”. Also allow users to set the maximum allowed transfer per given interval, and the maximum total bandwidth DNA can consume. Finally, make it explicit how DNA will hobble my connection, and give the user some reason to want to install it regardless.

And put an icon into the taskbar. Really. The fact that it runs totally transparently with no sort of visual indicator sets off my “malware alert” siren.

Something that would be helpful is to give some sort of visual indicator — perhaps a taskbar icon — that DNA is working, and notify users when they are accessing accelerated content. And if a user has throttled their DNA connection, have a pop-up notification from that same icon that, if they didn’t throttle DNA, they could have experienced this content even more quickly.

Fundamentally, the lack of disclosure is troubling when it comes to this software. On the plus side, however, it’s trivial to deinstall BitTorrent DNA.

In absence of other options, that’s exactly what I did.

Now my laptop runs cool again, my other downloads are running at full speed again, and my Vonage VoIP phone connection isn’t skipping anymore. They got one thing right, but “easy uninstall” probably wasn’t on the top of their priority list.

This morning in staff meeting, we took a few moments to correlate on the dates for decommissioning and aging “IBM Blade Center”. These are stalwart little units that we’ve used for years. At just 8U (approximately 14″) high, you can stack six of these in a standard nineteen-inch 48U rack.

These things give off heat like a $@^#)$*^&!). I mean, seriously, you stand in front of a wall of these guys, and you’re freezing your privates off from the amount of A/C required to keep them cool, while if you stand behind them, you’re bathing in sweat.

Their strong suit, though, is how much “rack density” you gain. Each Blade Center holds 14 blades. That is, 14 fully-functional computers with somewhere between two and eight Intel Xeon CPUs at 1.6 to 3.0GHz apiece, at least 6GB of RAM, and around 150GB of hard drive space.

That’s up to 84 fully-functioning computers — in the same league as today’s higher-end desktop computers as far as processing power goes — in a space smaller than your broom closet.

These Blades are also extraordinarily manageable and easy to work on. IBM did a great job designing them, and we’re sad to see them go to be replaced by a bunch of 1U servers which aren’t anywhere near as rack-dense or easily maintainable. The new units, however, have the virtue of being the corporate standard due to extreme discounts from a major retailer. And the fact is, these new boxes are much faster than the aging Blade Centers. Downside: they are much less rack-dense, and due to heat management issues, we can’t fit more than 14 in a single rack, rather than the 84 we could run from IBM.

I’m not entirely excited about the replacements, as you can probably tell. In my gut, it feels like we’re “vendor swapping” simply to keep some bean-counters happy, and exchanging to an inferior tech because it’s easier than trying to push through a purchase with a vendor who doesn’t have a favorable sales relationship with us.

Anyway, a cost that needs to be factored in when planning large-scale computing infrastructure is power usage. Fully-loaded, these blade centers consume more than 5,500 watts of power (perhaps 2200 or so on average because these are older/slower units). That’s about the same usage as a five-ton air-conditioner unit, but these things run ALL THE TIME and don’t cycle on and off like an AC unit. Plus, in the summer, you need to run an AC unit just to keep these bad boys cool.

But, hey, if there is not much of a market for a unit, occasionally my employer makes older machines available to employees for a discount or for the price of “you haul this 200 lb monstrosity away”. I have an old Sun E4200 in my garage awaiting conversion into a refrigerator from this very sort of deal.

If I wanted to actually run this unit, though, and use the 14 computer embedded in it, how much would it cost? Well, the equation is 5.5kw * 24 hrs * 7 days * 4 weeks * .08 = right near $300/month just in power costs to run the beast. Maybe as low as $150 if you’re running older/slower blades.

Ouch. I pity the small company who will end up buying this unit at a deep discount if they don’t plan for the power cost.

I have been a user of OpenOffice and its predecessor, StarOffice, for over a decade. I began using it occasionally around 1995, and by 1998 I used it to the exclusion of Microsoft Office wherever possible. It worked well for my mostly-lightweight word processing and spreadsheet needs, and I got very used to it. I fell in love with certain features, particularly the “export to PDF” feature that was sorely lacking in MS Office, and the multitude of exportable and importable formats.

As my skills have grown, so too have my needs. I’ve learned macro languages and formula manipulation in OpenOffice now, and take advantage of a number of other people’s templates that also use these features. At Sammy G’s behest, I began experimenting with Google Docs. I think it’s a fantastic collaboration platform, but unfortunately its lack of support for OpenOffice/MS Office-style macros made it a deal-killer for maintaining some of my spreadsheets.

An example spreadsheet is my budget. It lives on a laptop at my home, and gets backed up to an online repository after every major change. There have been a number of times that a financial question has popped up while I’m away, and I’d like to pull up my budget to consult and figure out where we are at financially. Unfortunately, my current config allows that only as much as I am content to have a read-only copy of my budget on my screen… there’s no way to coordinate writes except saving it back to my online repository, and remembering to update the local copy when I get back to my laptop.

Enter: Ulteo. Could this be the answer?

(Credit to Chris Lejeune for the link.)

Some months ago, Justin told us about the upcoming release of Sweeney Todd. Well, I finally watched it.

I found the show brilliantly scored, with voices that didn’t quite live up to the sweeping soundtrack, but sung with honesty. Many touching moments, with macabre humor.

I found, though, that once Todd launches his campaign of homicide, I lost interest, and just got alternately bored, grossed out, and found the plot pretty predictable. I knew who the old lady was within moments of seeing her, and also knew she was doomed from the start. Perhaps I’ve just seen too many movies… but although I really enjoyed the music, I just wasn’t swept away by the movie.

What about you?

Good evening, one and all. I’ve been lurking, shame on me I know, and reading with great interest but not chiming in so much. But, to explain a little about what has been occupying my time: some of my coworkers and I have been doing some unofficial blogging about the Museum where I started working back in November. You might enjoy clicking through to A Repository for Bottled Monsters. If you are in DC and interested in a tour, let me know.

This morning, I ran across an article by Farhad Manjoo entitled Why Apple Fans Hate Tech Reporters

I’m really not an Apple or Windows fanboy myself. My wife and my mom use Apple laptops; I run Windows on my laptop, and Linux on my desktops. I prefer Linux because I think it’s satisfactory for most heavy-lifting corporate jobs as well as computers for grandma where needs are limited. But I’m negotiable as far as that goes; for instance, if you’re into computer games, the anemic selection for Linux probably won’t do (thus why my laptop runs Windows at the moment). Just pick the best tool for the job.

I also think the Dewalt 36V cordless tools are the most rugged, longest-lasting cordless power tools you can buy. They are really contractor-quality instruments, and if you do construction for a living you could use just the one battery and have enough power to get a full day of work in without swapping. I also use the batteries from the tool packs for my model airplanes, so this brand of tools is doubly useful to me. These tools are expensive, though, and quite large and heavy. If you are concerned about weight or expense, a different brand or smaller model is probably the best fit for you. As a 6’1″, 230lb male who is used to tossing around 80lb metal boxes full of backup tapes every day, the weight and size don’t bug me and I really like the tools because they won’t poop out on a job. To each his own.

The reason the article was so interesting to me is because I fancy myself a moderate. The way I act, speak, and write are all informed by an overriding thought: what’s the most moderate course?

OK, OK, Timpane, stop laughing!

Anyway, no, OK, so other than one little blind spot surrounding the whole God/religion thing — a bias that, while I try to tone it down, I must acknowledge is present at least a little, teensy bit — I tend to try to choose the most moderate course.

And this is what amazed me about this artle, because Sanjoo was the first writer I’ve seen to address media bias this way. He discussed some research into the issue performed in the aftermath of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese:

The researchers showed the students six news segments… People who were neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — presumably those from the psych classes — came down somewhere in the middle….Pro-Palestinian viewers said the news clips excused “Israel when they would have blamed some other country”; that the news accounts didn’t focus enough on Israel’s role in the massacre; that the segments would prompt neutral observers to take Israel’s side; and that the journalists who’d put together the stories were probably advocates of Israel. Israel’s supporters, meanwhile, said the exact opposite. … “If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it’s partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy,” Ross says. “You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving them equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness.” … Psychologists call this the “hostile media phenomenon”.

The news clips were identical. They were considered by neutral third parties to be objective analysis of the events. Yet partisans on both sides thought the news clips exhibited media bias in favor of the opposing party because they gave both sides of the conflict equal weight.

I think this is a key concept in this age of right and left-wing media pundits claiming media bias. If you think the media is biased, it may say a lot about you, and almost nothing about the objectivity of the media.

I guess since I agree with this, it must mean I have a pro-media bias.

If I understand correctly, the general rule of thumb on a TV screen is that if it’s standard 480i/480p, you want your viewers to sit between 3 and six times as far the diagonal screen size in inches. The reason for this is picture clarity; at these distances, the image is viewable without any noticeable artifacts or quality issues.

So if I had a twenty-seven inch CRT, the ideal distance for viewing according to this formula is between 6.75 and 13.5 feet away. That’s pretty close to our current viewing distance: 12 feet away (more or less, the old TV is quite thick).

Now for HD viewing, the rule is 1.5 to 3.0 times the screen size. Reversing that means that I should look for a screen according to this formula:

144 / 3 = 48 inches minimum size 144 / 1.5 = 96 inches maximum size

We have a sectional couch, though, so I am taking the minimum viewing distance into consideration, as well. If we have a big party, some individuals may be as close as 5-6 feet (72 inches) from the screen, and well off to one side (so screens with poor side view angles are not an option):

72 / 3 = 24 inches minimum 72 / 1.5 = 48 inches maximum

So it seems like the ideal screen size for viewing from the whole space, without making it too big for people up close and too small for people farther away, is right around 48 inches.

Do you have experience with large wide-screen displays and have some recommendations on viewing areas for a non-theater living room arrangement?

• The lighting is uncontrolled (two windows, open archway to the kitchen, open doorframe with no door toward the kitchen, high ceilings, two large windows), so I need something that can handle glare and bright surroundings… that means DLP is probably out, because I’ve never seen a DLP rear-projection screen that can handle brightly-lit areas well. Nor can regular projectors, though they definitely have a HUGE cost-appeal due to arbitrary screen sizes.
• LCD or Plasma seems to be the best option. Due to the sectional couch with some people at extreme viewing angles if it’s full, a plasma seems to be the better choice. I checked out some LCD displays, and the brightness drop-off if you’re not in the “sweet spot” is pretty dramatic. It’s not deal-killing, but plasmas seem to stay at full brightness at all angles better than LCDs when I looked at them in the store. Newer LCDs are much better than older ones, but still pretty dim viewed from angles beyond about 45 degrees off-center. It’s even more pronounced in the up-and-down angle than left and right… but that’s not easily tested in the store, and you can compensate for it with correct placement in the room.
• Wall-mounting, I think, is a must. We have several small children, and a large TV that can topple onto them is a safety hazard. Plus, wall-mounting just looks cooler 🙂

I already have a couple of top contenders for my “heart of my living room entertainment system” crown, but I’m interested in other products you may have had a good experience that fit the above criteria.

So this week, I finally got my kids onto a new(ish) computer, and retired their old PC into duty as a media player. I got it set up attached to the TV, and was happily loading it with some of my personal DVD rips and whatnot. I then tried to attach to Netflix in order to play some movies.

Now, I’ve enjoyed Netflix’s streaming service. Because I’m a bit “bandwidth-challenged” at the moment (1.5mbit DSL), I don’t get the full-quality streams, but it’s still nice to kick back with a new(ish) release on Netflix and watch a show with my wife on a Friday night or whanot. It’s not near-DVD-quality like we got on Comcast, but I guess that’s what we get for moving out into the “country” (dirt road off a main road, you can see the subdivisions from here, but we have a rooster next door, horses behind us, and cows lowing into our windows in the morning).

I was greeted with a Microsoft DRM error, immediately after the Netflix player finished filling the buffer. I tried several workarounds, to no avail.

Finally, I called Netflix tech support. We walked through a few options, the tech kept consulting his knowledge base, and got nowhere. Finally, the tech asked “What kind of graphics card do you have, and what screen is it hooked up to?”

Well, I mean, that’s an obvious red-herring, right? What kind of screen? “I have an NVidia GeForce4 MX 440 with 64MB RAM, attached to an old Samsung twenty-seven inch CRT. We haven’t really gotten with the times yet.”

“Connected via S-Video?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have another screen you can try it with, perhaps via S-Video or maybe the DVI or VGA port?”

“Yeah, I have the old monitor we used to use right here.”

Five huffy minutes later, muttering about red herrings the whole time, I hooked up the monitor, disconnected the TV, and rebooted. I went to stream a Netflix movie… and it just worked.

The tech suggested that I should contact NVidia and indicate my displeasure to them. “Over a six-year-old video card not supporting streaming movies to a CRT? Yeah, not likely to make a difference to them. What is the exact problem?

“According to my knowledgebase, certain cards don’t support certain monitor or screen combinations. Since you seem to be a technical sort of person, you should search for “COPP” in your favorite search engine.”

I thanked him, got off the phone, and did so. I came across a half-dozen sites talking about COPP, then finally found Davis Freeberg’s description of COPP. Other than which devices are connected, it’s EXACTLY what I had been experiencing.

So here’s the situation: I can’t play back to my old TV. I’m not even assured, now, that if I connect my DVI port on this graphics card to a new HD television that I’ll be able to view the media I’m paying for. I even tried mirroring the output, leaving an old video monitor connected… and that worked, sorta. The content played on the monitor, but left an empty IE window on my old TV CRT.

This isn’t an NVidia problem, folks. This is a Netflix, movie studio, and Microsoft problem. NVidia hardware adheres to the standard: the app can’t be sure that the card is not connected to something that would record the output, so it refuses playback on that device. Doing exactly what the movie studios, Microsoft, and Netflix have agreed to: refuse to play back on anything that they can’t be certain isn’t a recording device.

I’m in a quandary: it’s now much more practical for me to download movies illegally than attempt to work within their system because their system is BROKEN. If I want to watch a movie on my CRT without having a physical DVD in my possession, there’s only one way I can do it: copy it illegally — DVD Rip, BitTorrent, or sharing among friends — one way or the other.

The movie studios, Microsoft, and Netflix together have created a situation where they have ruined the value-add of this product. Using their player is now actually a REDUCTION in value compared to the options available to me if I ignore their restrictions.

That’s backwards capitalism. Make it better, faster, and cheaper, and I’ll buy it from you. Make it incompatible with my equipment, slower, and more expensive, and I’d rather just ignore your existence.

Anyway, off that soapbox.

On to the next.

What, then, are the options? After a long around-the-water-cooler session with co-workers, the logical options seem to be:

• Apple TV. I already have three Macintosh computers in this house, what’s one more Apple device? Upside: I can rip my existing media and watch it. Downside: Their library of movies to rent or purchase is kind of anemic… the video store around the corner has better selection.
• Linux with MythTV. I would probably want to pick up a TV card for the computer so I could record live TV, and maybe have to do a small upgrade to the PC so it can handle recording and playback simultaneously.
• Buy a new TV. That’s an option I’m seriously looking at… but again, I have no guarantees their DRM won’t break my setup again.
• Linux or Windows with DRM-free, unprotected content… running the risk that I’ll have a Cease & Desist slapped on me for trading copyrighted content. Realize, I have exactly ZERO pirated movies on any of my systems right now. Zip. Netflix was that nice… but this new restriction makes me think maybe it’s worth the admittedly low risk.
• Just do the whole video-rental-store thing again. Probably the cheapest option.
• Ignore the major movie studios, and only watch independent films. Yeah, no, I’m too much of a pop-culture junkie.

Options I’ve missed?

My co-worker, Christopher Lejeune, was interviewed for an article in the Deseret News.

He came away from Iraq feeling like the military effort there had been accomplished and that the rebuilding work, although essential, was not the military’s job. “They need good, clean water, good electricity. But these are not the jobs of tank gunners and Bradley drivers and artillerymen,” he said. U.S. forces, he believes, need to be in Afghanistan.

When I write about events in the Middle East, I’m pretty much mostly concerned about their domestic effect. Were I living in Baghdad, I’m positive my outlook would be different, but I live in Utah. I felt like, although the writer did a fair job representing Chris’s views, the following quote was just left dangling without much explanation:

LeJeune said he would “love to see a withdrawal from Iraq and a real focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, what have you,” he said. “The forgotten war there is still raging and they don’t have the resources because we’re tied up in Iraq.”

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “have gained strength, as we pulled resources from Afghanistan. Not only has this war devastated our national security, but it has devastated the people of Utah.”

How has it devastated the people of Utah?

• 21 servicemen from Utah dead in Iraq
• A thousand Utah National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq. These represent some of our best and brightest young men and women — the intellectual capital of our state, and the future of our democracy — deployed for great lengths of time with very brief stays back home in Utah before being re-deployed.
• Utah Guardsmen are being placed at risk doing jobs they are not trained or equipped to do.

Surprisingly, one of the effects I thought I’d see — a decline in Utah Guard enlistment rates — doesn’t exist. To their credit, most Utahns, particularly those in Utah’s majority religion, have a strong patriotic streak which is reflected in Guard enlistment numbers.

My greatest concern regarding this use of the National Guard is due to the Total Force Act of 1973, stipulating that the National Guard was to be treated as an extension of the federal US military. Combined with the 1987 Montgomery Amendment to the National Defense Authorization (opposed by all 50 state governors), we’re now in a situation where state governors cannot withhold their National Guard troops from foreign service for any reason, including local disaster, civil unrest, or invasion. The President has used this authority to such an extent that the occupying force in Iraq is — if I understand correctly — principally composed of Guardsmen. This deployment has already had a profound effect on relief efforts in Tornado Alley, resulting in the displacement of and hardships to citizens who could have found emergency relief if their National Guard weren’t already deployed.

I think the 1973 Total Force law is simply a bad law. The Guard is here to defend our country and serve domestically in times of emergency. It serves as a supplement to our standing army.

The Guard should not be our standing army.

I realize I’ve gone a bit off-topic from the interview, but his situation upon returning from his tour reminds me viscerally of what’s currently wrong with our military strategy. After serving abroad, a soldier should be able to enlist in the Guard and look forward to helping out on the domestic front when disaster strikes. He should march in parades, a proud symbol of the strength of our citizen militia. He should supplement our police and search and rescue teams when necessary. He should serve a few weeks a year to keep his training up, and keep physically fit to be ready for the challenges of serving his neighbors. As his neighbor, I willingly supplement his income through my state taxes because he will protect my family when the worst happens.

He should never be deployed abroad unless his specialty is critical to operations and he needs to serve in a very time-limited capacity to train the standing army how to do the job.

I think the combination of amendments and laws, as it stands, allows abuse of state troops by the Federal government, and we’re seeing that abuse now in the constant deployment of our National Guard abroad. This degrades the ability of our citizen soldiers to respond to domestic emergencies and leaves us in a vulnerable position at home and abroad.