Partitioning a 2TB disk with 4K sectors with Linux

How I got the logical and physical sectors to align properly on a new 2TB disk with 4K sectors.  Posting for posterity.

Cloud Storage Solutions

My belabored attempt to break down the practicality of using cloud based backup solutions.  There are probably services out there that I have not mentioned but this is just a few that come to mind.


Edited 3/7/2011 to reflect Google Storage for Developers lower prices.

A Google/Facebook blackout might not kill SOPA

Abstract: At least one person (a must read post) in Washington explicitly wants to censor the Internet and our attempts to stop it may just be giving them more motivation to do it. 

This is the kind of thing that I could do without knowing, but it kind of confirms my thoughts on the subject.  SOPA and PIPA may have started out with big money from the entertainment industry as a way to protect an aging business model, but soon Washington realized what an opportunity this was.  The first step down a slippery slope where a central body has control over what gets published on the Internet, and they get to do it under the guise of protecting an industry's "intellectual" property.  The technically literate community is irate...

Let's think about that for a minute.  Does everybody have their tinfoil hats on?  Great, let's begin.


The Internets are pissed 
(how we see things)

Who are the Internets for the purpose of this discussion?  They are the people that are active participants in the web of information exchange.  That is they use message boards, social media sites, and other means of exchanging ideas with others like them.  For examples see postings on Slashdot, reddit, Hacker News, and the list could go on and on...

Somehow (it does not really matter how at this point) the Internets got wind of these really bad pieces of legislation that were trying to get pushed through.  It was shared among us and the shared response was like something out of a scene in Braveheart.  In my mind reddit is as close to a William Wallace as we've come, but our reaction has been in general to attempt to stir up as much dissent among the Internets and hopefully the average American as possible.  Why not?  After all it has worked pretty well in the past.  

We have done a good job about voicing to the technical among us that SOPA and PIPA is bad and there is none that I know of that are in support of it (or at least that dare to mention it).  Something strange was happening though, none of the major news outlets (read - things my parents would see) were covering it at all.  It wasn't that we were not being loud enough about it; they don't want to cover it.  They want to bring as little attention to it as possible, and that means not trying to spin it as positive (a hard feat indeed) but not talking about it at all.  Recognizing this issue reddit is leading the charge with a way to make sure that we are getting everyone's attention - make people mad.  The claim is that by blacking out popular Internet services that you can illustrate to people what a censored Internet would feel like and prod them to action.  As Forbes pointed out blocking reddit wouldn't be enough and is in a sense preaching to the choir.  They claimed that Google and/or Facebook needed to join in to make this truly effective.  I thought this just might work.  

Imagine if everyone in the US got a message to call or visit their representatives when they visited Google or Facebook.  The response would be unprecedented.  It would show for the first time how powerful the Internet could be - the "nuclear option."  How could it not work right?  If most of the country is calling you really irate and threatening to throw you out of office if you vote for SOPA, are you going to take that chance?

The Internets are causing trouble again
(how they see things)

There is a certain amount of smug pride in being a member of the old guard in Washington and some representatives use the fact that they don't use the Internet and don't care to know how it works as something of a bragging right.  For most of them the Internet is something of a toy or an annoyance.  Then comes the Arab Spring.  All of a sudden the Internet becomes a force for leveling the playing field not only in business, but also in the struggle and dissemination of governing power.

Imagine that you are a representative and people are calling you left and right telling you that they don't want you to support SOPA/PIPA.  On one hand the entertainment industry has a lot of power in the US and they are stuffing your pockets with wads of cash if you are willing to play ball, but on the other hand if people are angry enough you might loose your job.  The tension really starts to heat up when you start hearing about the "nuclear option," and you realize that larger portions of your votes are at risk.  

If you vote against SOPA/PIPA then you are going to lose the support of the massive entertainment industry, and make your constituents really happy (until the next thing that comes along they don't like).  But doing this confirms for those pesky Internet folks that they have a lot of power, and sets a precedence that threatens your future income from lobbyists and their clients.  

If you vote for SOPA/PIPA then you are assuring long term support from the entertainment industry, and the framework will be in place to silence whatever critics might arise in the future.  Since the majority of your voters will move on to whatever reality TV bullshit is trending or the latest shiny toy in a few days anyways, what's to risk?  Possible short-term lost, but a very substantial long term gain.

This is just crazy talk!

By doing what we thought was best at the time - raising awareness about an important issue - I fear that we may have given the politicians more incentive to implement a framework for shutting us up.  

Think about it - the more the Internet flexes its muscles the more the politicians see it as a threat and the harder they will fight to cripple it.  They are getting closer to the point where they risk losing everything and may result to extreme measures to protect their position of power.

The truth is at this point that at least one of our leaders see this as a golden opportunity to silence a very vocal minority.  Civil liberties are rarely lost over night, but it is a gradual descent.  We will not be North Korea over night, but as Benjamin Franklin put it, "those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  I can't help but think about that now every time I have to fly.

I hear myself and know how crazy all of this sounds.  Hopefully this will all disappear soon, but this one didn't.

Android/iOS Apps I would like to see

I have been posting quite a bit lately about politically charged things, and not to worry I am gathering sources for another one soon.  That being said I wanted to comment on some Android apps that I would like to see built.  I am not an Android developer, and I lack the time to become one, and these applications would need to be well integrated with existing services so it is unlikely that anyone outside of these companies could easily construct them.

Ikea personal shopping assistant

I was shopping with my wife and kids at Ikea and I saw a great opportunity to make the shopping experience more streamlined.  If you have never shopped at an Ikea before I highly recommend that you try it out at least once for the unusual experience that it offers.  The gist of it is that you start at one end of the store and follow a planned route that takes you through the entire store until you reach a self-service area where you pick the items that you saw on the show-room floor earlier and place them on your cart.  As you are walking through the store you jot down item numbers and locations of the items in the self-service area for reference later.  So me and my wife are trying to shop for furniture, watch two toddlers and jot down long series of numbers with tiny pencils - not ideal.

We both have Android phones.  I imagine that when I enter the Ikea, instead of picking up my list and pencil that there is a WiFi network, and a QR code for the Ikea app.  I install the app and it recognizes (based on the WiFi network) that I am in a particular Ikea.  Maybe I can sign in with my Ikea "family" account maybe I don't have to.  As I am walking through the store and finding items that I want I can simply scan the QR code on the item and place it in my shopping cart.  Let's think about the advantages of such a system for the consumer.

• I have a running total of how much stuff I am putting in my cart
• I can get suggested items that are needed to complete the setup (the slatted bed base!)
• If the stock of an item is limited the app can alert me that I might need to pick a backup
• When I go to find the items in the self service area the app can give me a well planned path to take
• A list of videos for assembling the furniture is queued up for later use.

There are also advantages for Ikea.

• As people in the show-room place items in the carts you can ensure that they are well stocked in the self-serve area
• Increase ticket totals by suggesting complementary products
• Increase the number of people served by helping them move through more quickly
• Identify shoppers with large numbers of heavy items on their lists and offer additional assistance
• Easy way to alert customers to in-store promotions and draw attention to items that you want to move quickly

Indoor navigation is not great at this point and shouldn't be a show stopper, but with innovations in this area you could do some really cool things.  Imagine something with augmented reality like the Yelp Monocle app.  You could hold up your phone's camera to the show-room floor and have overlays of prices and reviews for the products.  While all of this is great, I would be happy with just having an app that allows me to scan QR codes and add them to a list.

Basically Ikea needs to put less effort on their catalog app and buy/implement a better integrated version of Ikea Picking List.

Netflix/Hulu remote

My wife and I watch all of our "TV" online these days and even though we have a long range wireless keyboard and mouse it is still cumbersome to operate our Mac from across the room.  There are lots of solutions with tiny keyboards and track pads, but those miss the point.  If I am typing an email I am going to go up to the computer, I just want to control certain sites.  I will open a browser window to Netflix and can even search for the movie that I am looking for, but I would like to have an app on my Android device that allows me to play/pause and fast forward or rewind the movie that is playing.  I don't want/need to watch the move on my phone but I would like to be able to control the movie that is playing across the room.  Maybe this would be best implemented with a browser extension, but I feel like it is possible with existing web development tools.  The advantages to the consumer in this case are obvious, but there is an advantage for the content provider.  Key ad real estate!  You would annoy consumers to no end with banner ads on screen for content, but how about an ad on their remote?  Obviously there are people that would rather not have ads on their remote and there would be a paid version of the app for that.

Basically all I am asking for is porting of the YouTube Remote app to work on Netflix.  They already have a Neflix app.

In closing

If there are any folks from Ikea or Netflix listening please develop these Android (or iOS) apps ASAP. Also if there are any gifted Android developers out there who want to make a go of this I would happily help with the server-side development.

un-occupy GoDaddy

I began moving all of my domains from GoDaddy last week in response to their support of SOPA.  I think that this piece of legislation is reprehensible and sets the United States on a path down a slippery slope where censorship is the norm.  To be honest censorship is one of the scariest things that could happen in a country. 

I would like to say that the actual move of the domains was relatively painless, but it wasn't.  I had heard reports of GoDaddy doing nasty things to make the transfer of domains take longer, and given that these kind of actions can carry stiff penalties for domain registries I assumed that they were largely blown out of proportion and that it would not happen to me.  Let's just say that I should have expected nothing less than the worst from a company that has spent the last few years sucking.  They have been a terrible registrar, but the inconvenience has stopped me from moving until I heard about the SOPA support.  

I am a little ashamed of myself for not moving my domains over the elephant slaughter by their CEO, Bob Parsons.  I have also been embarrassed about doing business with a company that uses blatant low-brow and crude sexual advertising.  I love a beautiful woman (I married her), but when I hope that none of the professional women that I have worked with do a whois lookup on one of my domains revealing that I have a domain registered with GoDaddy - it can't be a good sign.  What does having a domain with GoDaddy potentially say about me?  

• I am frugal (cheap).
• I react to ads with scantily clad women.
• I like bad customer service or worse...
• I don't know what good customer service is.
• I associate with crass men who kill majestic animals for sport.
• I am lazy...

I am pretty sure that none of these are true, and I am going to be more aware of what my purchases say about me as a person.  This is important because our purchases do say a lot about who we are.  Purchasing power is (at least in the US) the most powerful weapon that we have against big-business and their pupet of a government.  Let's explore this for a minute...

Reddit users proposed a boycot of GoDaddy on the 29th of December, and due to a large number of people proactively moving their domains in the days leading up to the 29th GoDaddy did a full turnabout on their SOPA support.  I have no doubt that their public stance is different from their true intentions and their response was too little too late, but the fact is that when their users started walking away the company listened real quick.  I still moved my domains because GoDaddy has given me plenty of reasons over the years and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was still pretty evident that this type of tactic is effective.  Compare that to the occupy movement that is taking place all over the country - there has been a lot of fuss but no one is listening.  The protesters are still sleeping in the cold, and the bankers are still getting their bonuses.  But the protesters are still walking in their Keen Sandals over to the Starbucks and paying with their Visa before sitting down with their iPad.  I am not saying that any of those things alone is bad, but if you want to change big business then you have to go after their business.

The best piece of advice that I have heard came from a friend that owns a popular restaurant here in Chapel Hill, NC.  He was talking to a bunch of protesters staying at the occupy camp down the street from his business, and he told them that the best way to get a big banks is to go after their income - use cash.  The idea is that small business owners like himself pay huge sums of money to the banks in the form of fees for debit and credit card purchases, and if those fees stop rolling in that the banks will eventually become weaker over time.  I was skeptical at first, and I am still not 100% convinced that the scale of these payments are enough to be effective, but maybe it is like a death of 1000 cuts.  At any rate, even if it is not effective at sticking it to the big banks, it will be effective at helping small business owners and keeping more funds in the community and off Wall St.  This is the easiest to do since we eat/shop in these places already and all we have to do is remember to hit up the yuppie food stamp machine (ATM) before hand.

For other big businesses, the changes in our personal habits may be a little harder to absorb, but it is a necessary change if we want corporations that act with social responsibility.  We have to vote with our dollars.  For this to be truly effective we will need more transparency in campaign contributions, but if a company backs a candidate that I think is harmful for the advancement of our society then maybe cutting off their revenue stream is the most effective means of changing their mind.  The first thing that I see that may need to change is how me and my family entertain ourselves.  The entertainment industry has really gotten too big not to fail.  They have their fingers in everything and have proven that they can easily move Washington with their wallet.  Since paying cash is not going to be effective here we are going to have to start paying attention to which studios are doing good things with our hard earned money (non of the major ones).  

The biggest problem here is that I see little chance in convincing the larger population to boycot any movie studio because (i) it requires though and investigation, and (ii) there are often not convenient and equal products to substitute.  Just like the majority of people are not going to sleep on the hard cold ground to effect change in a corrupt partnership between big banks and the government, few people are going to skip watching the latest big budget film because the studio is lacking scruple.  

I am not expecting large and lasting change any more.  Maybe I am just getting syndical as I get older, but wouldn't it be nice.  Still, I am going to do my best to do my part and I hope that a growing number of people will find their own solutions.  As for GoDaddy...  I have moved all of my domains and deleted the ones I couldn't move.  

There is no shortage of articles on this topic but this one titled Stupid GoDaddy Deserves Boycott is particularly great.  "If GoDaddy were to just go away, the world and Internet would be a better place. If I had any domains there to pull, they would already be gone.

We are researchers not lobbyists...

Dear fellow academics,

Many of us try to distance ourselves from politics - we are researchers not lobbyists I was once told, but now is not the time to assume that your absence in the debate will not be missed. There are two pieces of legislation being proposed in Washington that will drastically alter the Internet as we know it. Because the Internet in the US (as of right now) is uncensored I would encourage you to spend a few minutes researching the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act. My point is not to sway you with this email to support or oppose either of these items (I will do that in person). I want to remind everyone that even if we are not lobbyists we still have a responsibility as researchers to make our voices heard so that some logic and thoughtful reasoning goes into the laws that govern the country we all share.

~Eric Gavaletz

North Carolina House Bill 129

I do most of my research work in networking and I am constantly amazed by how far behind the US lags in comparison to other developed countries in providing affordable high-speed Internet access.  As a consumer I am more often frustrated by my lack of options and how the price continues to climb even as service quality declines.  

The stark reality is that being an ISP is not glamorous nor is it as lucrative as being a content provider.  Your cable Internet provider charges the same amount if you watch streaming video every night or if your connection sits idle.  As more and more people use the Internet for more things their connections are idle less often.  For the providers this means that it is getting harder and harder to borrow from Peter to pay Paul.  Think about it this way, if the cable service promises you and your neighbor that you can have a 10Mbps connection to their house, historically they could get away with only providing a touch over 10Mbps for both of you under the assumption that it is unlikely that you both use 10Mbps at the same time.  In the past this wasn't an unreasonable assumption, because it was unlikely that we would both download a large file at the same time.  Times they do change, and now it is very likely that we both are trying to watch a show on Hulu or Netflix at 8:00 in the evening.  Now the cable companies can do one of two things, they can make the improvements to their network that were long overdue to keep customers happy, or they can rely on the fact that there isn't a viable alternative for most people and allow service to degrade over time.  It seems that there has been a move towards the latter outside of large cities where it is more common to have competing vendors.

I am not going to get into a debate about the value of competition and how that will effect the level of service etc, but I will say that the state-of-the-art is broken.  Something needs to be done soon.  A handful of municipalities have taken matters into their own hands and deployed their own networks to provide competitively priced Internet access, but for the last four years in North Carolina the cable companies and telecoms have been lobbying for a bill that would prevent cities from developing their own networks.  You should decide for yourself about this and I encourage you all to write (not email) and call your representatives to let them know how you feel about this.  

To be clear this is not about more or less government.  This isn't a partisan issue.  This is about giving people choice and encouraging competition in a market that has become stagnant.  As consumers we need to demand more and this seems to be the only way to get the Internet providers to listen.  Their greed has led them to this point and if they continue to be greedy it will lead to their decline.  I hope that you agree that this bill will do a lot of damage to progress in North Carolina, and that the cable company has been taken enough of your paycheck in exchange for crappy service!  But if you don't feel that way that is your right...

Please help in making sure that all of our representatives receive a very clear message that we want them to vote NO on House Bill 129.  Here is what to do...

• Review the information on the best way to contact your representatives at democracy-nc.org.
• Look up your representatives here (I suggest looking by zip code).
• Get the mailing addresses and/or phone numbers for the above representatives.
• Write a simple polite message to the representative (even if you plan to call) making a couple key points:
• First clearly state that you live in their district.  Back this up by providing your address and phone number.
• State that it is important that they vote No on "House Bill 129" (Senate Bill 87 if you are writing to your State Senator).
• Only after you have done the preceding provide any reasons or argument for your feelings.  Please be concise and polite throughout.  The longer or more argumentative your writing the less likely it is to be read.
• Mail or call your representative with the above message.
• Follow up by encouraging others to do the same.  Use Facebook, Twitter and email as a way to let friends and family know that this is something we can have an effective impact on that affects us all.

Above all please remember that no matter how you feel it should be expressed calmly and logically.  Here's hoping that your Internet connection will be fat and low latency for years to come.

Want to know how bad your Internet connection is...

Visit netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu and run the tool.  You will be amazed at the results when they are not being influenced by the large ISPs.

Are you making a better world for your kids?

This is the question that I asked myself the other day while sitting at a desk and lamenting my present employment situation.  Since I work for a big company (one of the biggest of the biggest) there is a lot of overhead involved in my work.  Imagine if your workday were like Groundhog Day (the film) set at Initech...

Studying computers at a theoretical level to solve all kinds of interesting problems that have the potential to offer great benefit to society is a legacy that I can feel good about.  A lot of the work that is done in academia is done with the sole purpose of making the world a better place.  A few projects in our department that come to mind are medical image analysis, scientific visualization, and motion planning algorithms for micro-surgery.  This is all to say that computers can and should be used to make the world a better place.  

Though the United States and its fine universities have long lead the field on innovation in the sciences, this may not always be true and it is looking like the future of pure research is limited at best.  Pure research is not easily incorporated into a profitable business model, and in a profit driven capitalistic to a fault society where money talks academia is losing the good fight.  Some may argue that corporate research is a viable alternative, and that it has the added benefit of being privately funded -- not a burdon on the tax payers.  You shouldn't believe for one minute the corporate pretense that they are working to make the world a better place.

Private research groups used to be among the most innovative think tanks that the world has ever known, but those days seem to be but a distant memory.  While there are sure to be exceptions, today's "research" groups at major corporations have been reduced to nothing more than prototyping groups.  Where research used to be concerned with 10-20 years into the future, they now look at projects that are a mere two years out at best.  What is worse is that the big players of the golden years have been hobbled by top heavy management oversight who are risk averse and care little about the long term viability of a company.  

These companies develop their projects by selling them first, and only after they have a buyer they then target the project to the buyer's wants.  This limits the exposure of the company to the risk of expending resources on research and development work that may never turn into a profitable product.  The flip side of this is that the products tend to be mundane rehashes of existing technologies crammed into the latest buzz worthy fad of a template.  Today that means "the cloud."  Take the same applications that we have been writing for decades and do the same things in a browser instead of a desktop client.  Don't get me wrong I am a big fan of software as a service and while I have grown tired of hearing the word cloud tossed around as a catch all phrase for something that runs on a server, I do like the possible benefits.  Alas I digress...

The point is that these companies are not innovating and yet our research institutions are shrinking and dealing with massive budget cuts.  In the midst of these budget cuts the companies that are repackaging old ideas with clouds and calling it new want to charge municipalities and businesses exorbitant fees for using this "new" software with the promise of saving them lots of capital.  They want to sell your city management software that an undergrad with some PHP and mySQL could write in a summer for the wages of an internship, but they want to charge upwards of a million dollars for it!  Now that you bought the software the system is designed so that you are not going to be happy with the performance of the system, because it was written to run in a data-center and not on existing hardware.  Then they tie you into a service contract or into buying more servers (which they luckily sell).  

You might be saying that the big company hires lots of people who need to work too, and you are right.  The people that work on this software are very deserving of the jobs, and generally they do a pretty good job at it.  What they are not telling you is that they are off-shoring the jobs as fast as they can to make the company more profitable.  I wish I could say that the developers in these foreign countries are not being taken advantage of, but they are discussed as commodities.  You hear managers talking about them like heads of cattle, "did you hear that we are getting 3 to 1 in Ireland right now?"  "Yeah, but I am getting 10 to 1 in India!"  Those people deserve to get the same level of compensation as the developers with similar skills in the US.  What is not right is that these companies are using tax dollars (directly or indirectly) to pay the foreign developers after they fire the more costly developers in the US.

So my job is actively sending jobs and our tax dollars overseas, and as a computer scientist a large application of the technologies that we develop is used to automate repetitive processes.  This means that the jobs that were available to those people with low to moderate intelligence are disappearing quickly.  That software that is used to reduce labor costs just put a middle manager out of work, but the guy who empties his trash is still needed because he works for less than what it would cost to build a robot to do his job.  Where we are going with this is a ever widening wealth gap.  Even as a engineer that designs the stuff it is hard to stay on the right side of the gap, the non-unemployment side.

I was interrupted in writing this by a very good friend that reminded me of a recent talk that we attended by Srinivasan Keshav and a very nice essay on the goal of systems research.  I will not attempt to reduce an already concentrated essay here, but I will say that if you have made it this far in reading this post that you should read the essay in its entirety.  Though you probably will not agree with everything that he says, he has a very honest and straight forward style that can be refreshing, and what is the point of reading something that you agree with without some sort of mental accommodation anyways?

While I don't feel like I am doing very much to make the world a better place for my kids right now, it is important that I view this as a means to an end and not the entirety of my life.  I just need to get out of school and not chase a paycheck.  At least I can set an example of not being motivated by profit right?

An Error on the Internet!

So google did this experiment where it looked at the frequency of words in books and websites.  There is well over a trillion words in the data set.  A subset of that data is used to power an online N-gram viewer.  I was looking at the frequency of TCP and Internet, and I saw something funny.  So then I looked at just Internet...

Frequency of the word Internet by year in published books

Notice the bump around 1900?  If we look a little closer...

Frequency of the word Internet by year in published books

And if we look into some of the books that they were searching, they erroneously identified a common abbreviation for international, internat, as Internet.  The result is what looks like someone writing about a concept that would not be invented for another 70 years.

This is another example where processing these large amounts of data may benefit from crowd sourcing.  If the algorithm were told that the Internet didn't exist in 1900 and that it is unlikely to occur in literature then it might have picked internat. instead.

I almost forgot, the obligatory xkcd cartoon ("Duty Calls" #386).

My First Android Tablet

I recently purchased an Android tablet, and I wanted to share some of my initial thoughts and reactions.  I did a good bit of research and finally decided on the Viewsonic gtablet.  The reason I decided on this tablet was that the hardware in the unit looked great on paper.  I was able to pick it up at the last minute from a Sears for cheap ($370 at the time I bought it).  But anything that I can list out here can be found at the above link.  There seem to be a lot of varying images for the tablet, but the one we ended up with looked like this

My motivation for this purchase was to entertain our twins (1 year old boys) on a long drive (28 hours in the car spread out over 4 days of driving).  We had borrowed a in car DVD player from one of my wife's co-workers, but the engineer in me spotted some immediate problems.  

1. Keeping up with, changing, and dealing with fragile (prone to scratches) DVDs was not going to make our drive any easier.  
2. They each get their own screen, but the screens are poor quality, only 7 inches, and only show the same image.
3. There are a lot of wires running all over the place with these things, and if you have a toddler you know how irresistible a draping cable is!
4. They don't have a battery (stopping for gas?) so turning off the car resets everything.
5. While I could go on -- they are just pretty lame too...

What  you see on the screen above is the Tap-n-tap firmware that comes loaded on the tablet.  This is probably the source of most of the issues, but more about that in a bit.  For now here are some of the pros and cons for this tablet.

Pros:

• Resolution - The screen looks great when viewing it close up or even at a modest distance at a narrow viewing angle.
• Speed - Compared to my first generation Motorola Droid and even when compared to my wife's second generation Droid the hardware (at least on paper) is quite adept.
• Size - This thing is stylish and svelte even compared to the iPad.  The screen ratio is even better for viewing widescreen movies.
• Battery life - The battery on this thing lasted for about 6 hours of continuous use.  We were either playing mp3s on it or playing a movie for the kids, and we did not have to charge it in the car once.
• Sound - My wife and I watched a movie on the tablet at the in-laws one evening and much to our surprise the tiny speakers on this made a reasonable sound.  We were impressed enough that we even used it to play some holiday tunes one morning.  

But for all the pros that this tablet has there are some problems that one has to contend with.

Problems:

• The software on the tablet as it comes out of the box is not usable.  This is not and exaggeration, and keep in mind that I bought the first Android phone with the first version of the software.
• The touch screen has issues with sensitivity.  Even once the available adjustments are set such that the screen is at its most sensitive, it is difficult to get it to register a touch.  This is especially true around the edges of the tablet.  Given the wide spread nature of this issue and the fact that it is consistent across different versions of software, I believe that there are obvious hardware limitations at play.
• While the screen looks fantastic from strait on, the viewing angle is somewhat limited.  If you have never owned or used a slate style tablet before, then you probably aren't expecting that the tablet is a social instrument.  I was surprised by the fact that unlike a phone, the tablet provides a comfortable opportunity for collaboration.  The twins were far enough away from the tablet so that it wasn't too much of a problem, but when viewing a movie with my wife I found that the angle needed to be fine tuned frequently.

The update from Viewsonic was a vast improvement over the firmware that was on it out of the box, but the interface was still very poor.  I used a couple custom roms (Cyanogenmod and TNT-lite) and I am sure that more can be found with a quick Google search.  They made the tablet much better, but there were some lingering issues like the battery meter always reading 100% and force closes.  One piece of software that I did not get to test, but that sounded very cool was GPS tethering.  The idea is that you can take advantage of the large screen for navigation.

In preparation for our trip we needed to find a good mounting location that provided easy access from the passenger seat with a good view from the back seat.  I thought long and hard, and finally I decided that the front sunroof of our Discovery II was the solution.  I bought a cheap cell phone mount at a box retailer, and cut off the part that held the cell phone.  Then I cut a piece of plywood so that it was about 1/2 inch bigger on all four sides of the tablet.  I drilled holes at the four corners of the wood to thread elastic straps through.  The last step was to mount the stub of the phone mount to the back of the plywood.  This allowed for a lot of flexibility in placement, and held sturdily.  I will be making another one, but this time I will not be using a cheap phone mount.  The one I had used a stiff, but pliable adjustment.  The next one I build will have a hinged mechanism.

For a car charger you can't use a USB charger (not even with some custom wiring) because the output is too low.  SO I had to buy one at Radio Shack.  Not a big deal, but still an annoyance.

All in all I think the tablet fulfilled it purpose of entertaining our twins, but the thought of trying to use it for anything other than viewing media was going to be a nightmare.  The touchscreen issues killed it for me, and in the end it was returned.  Sears was great at returning it.

When I left Sears though I stopped by the Apple store to play with an iPad.  I still don't care for iOS, and the arrogant Apple clerk made me want to run screaming out of the store (full disclosure we have 4 macs at home and two more at our jobs).  That being said, there is no comparison between the responsiveness, and how smooth the iPad operates.  Maybe jailbreaking would make me feel better about the closed nature of the iPad, but that won't help me swallow the price.  Still this just reinfoces the idea that you get what you pay for, and after this experience I am going to have a hard time buying another Android tablet.  I just don't feel good about being an iPad owner.

k-Anonymity for Our Public Lives

I was just reading a paper that proposes a way to provide anonymity for location based services, and it really got me thinking about the priorities in information security and privacy.  The authors are in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and cite information leakage and a slippery slope slide into a 1984, George Orwell inspired, world where large amounts of location based information combined with public records provides a complete picture of the individual.

Take for example that a particular mobile device always looks for places to eat near a rehab hospital, that same mobile device begins long trips (GPS data) from a particular (home) address, and that home address is linked to a name in the white-pages.  This contrived example is not bullet-proof, but it illustrates how information leakage can, over time, expose a lot more about ourselves than we originally thought.

While all of this is well and good, and I appreciate the efforts of academic researchers; however, I can't help but think that we are not addressing the real problem.  If you are worried about data leakage, then you should be terrified about the way that most of us throw lots of information about our professional and private lives into the public domain readily.  Facebook is the prime example, and to their credit they have taken steps to remedy the data disclosure problems in older versions of their system.  People just have no notion of how the things they publish can effect them later on.  I even have an example where the person in question didn't even intend on providing a lot of information...I give you as an example the 

Jack and Jane Smith case...

Jack and Jane Smith think they are a clever pair, because every-time there is a marketing or signup sheet that asks for an email address they list mine instead of their own.  This seems innocent enough, but what they don't realize is that every piece of solicited junk that shows up in my inbox fills in more details about their personal and private lives.  This compounded with the fact that they have chosen to use their real names in coordination with these mailings accelerates this process even further.  The real funny part is that Jack fancies himself as an IT professional (don't get me started on this).

This project all got started when I got a "happy thanksgiving" email from Freedom Toyota in Hamburg, PA.  This got me to thinking that maybe this wasn't random internet spam, but that maybe all the emails that I keep getting for Jack and Jane are substantiated in some way.  Then I decided to do a bit of googling to find out more of who these people are...

Jack Smith is a 49 year old IT guy who lives in Schuylkill Haven, PA (I have the exact address and phone number) and I know when and where he went to high-school (Facebook), where he has worked (Linkedin), and lots of seemingly benign things like kids names and relatives (mom?).

Jane Smith is the 45 year old wife of Jack and lives with her husband in a modest home in an relatively urban area.  Not to be outdone by her husband she also provides lots of personal information on her website.

They have some kids and here is where things aren't quite so clear, and this is probably a result of multiple marriages and kids with former spouses, but they definitely have a kid named Jen.  What is interesting is that Jen is probably not Jane's daughter, because the Name Donna pops up quite a bit.  Jen lists a number of siblings on her Facebook page that don't show up on Jack, Jen or Donna's pages (family relationships can be quite complex).  But what is clear is that we know who Jen's main crush is.  She is also quite the aspiring photographer and fond of the UK...

If you still think all of this is pretty innocent then let me propose the following...I know names, and addresses and phone numbers, mothers, daughters, maiden names, high-schools cities/dates of birth and what kind of house/cars they own.  These sound a lot like the types of security questions that get asked when you call a customer service desk right?  Further all of this was acquired without spending a dime of my money.  I can't fathom the information I would get by paying a few dollars for background and records searches or the parents!  This could all lead to identity theft or worse.

When I got to this point I realized that I should go back and change the names...If their is a real Jack and Jane Smith, then you know that your name is just too common and generic and should have expected this or at least seen it coming...

A broader perspective...

The point is that there is no point in comprising intricate and complex algorithms for hiding personal information if people are going to be stupid and give it way.  This is a new area of concern for adults, but what will it mean for our kids who's photos and lives have been the subject of baby blogs and Twitter feeds since before they were even born?  Will the definition of privacy change as the founder of Facebook claims?  

In design/engineering you are taught to tackle the problem that has the greatest weight (opportunity for improvement) first.  Said another way...if you are drowning and holding onto an anvil, let go of that before you attempt to save yourself by emptying your pockets of lose change!

PS:  I have no intention of releasing the information about the Smiths, but I do intend to continue collecting information about them for as long as they are dumb enough to use my email address for marketing signups and spam likely forms...

It's Quit Facebook Day

While hanging out with friends this weekend we passed around an article that highlights the privacy and ethical shortfalls of Facebook.  Many of us commented on our intention to delete our accounts.  I have followed through on this and I hope that many of them will as well.  I have found a couple of things that will make the transition to a non-Facebook me easier.

Keeping your contacts:

This process allows you to get all of the email and other information from Facebook into other programs.  The point here is that while Facebook has allowed us to get in touch with many old friends that may not be the way we want to continue to keep track of them.  The process involves using a yahoo email account which has the option for importing your contact information from Facebook.  Then export that information to your service/application of choice.

Microbloging -- Status Updates:

While Twitter is not the perfect solution it is simple and there is little mistake about what is public and what is not.  I have a Twitter account that I will continue to use (http://twitter.com/gavaletz)

Bigger Posts:

I plan on using my blog (you are here now) for posts that are to lengthy to fit into the character limit for the Twitter API.  Here again there is little confusion about what is private or not.

Chat and Messages:

Email and instant messaging has worked for almost a decade and there seems little reason to think that it is not capable of working again.  I don't plan on posting an email address here, but if you are/were one of my friends on Facebook you have received a email from me explaining that I have left Facebook behind with my contact information including a link to this blog.

Photos and Videos:

This is somewhere that I found Facebook to be particularly weak anyways.  For video we use youtube and for photos we have always preferred Flickr.  Both of these sites offer free accounts to receive updates when your friends post new photos, but offer RSS feeds as well (more on that in a minute).

Private Posts:

There are some posts that are private in nature that I would like to share with family and friends but maybe not the entire Internet.  There is not an immediately clear solution to this, but then again there might be a problem with trying to post something that is partially protected to the internet.  It is possible to make a protected blog that requires users to register to see the posts and that may be the solution.

Aggregating the Information:

One of the selling points of Facebook is that it has everything in one convenient place.  I don't have to check n different blogs for my n friends.  There is a solution for this too.  And you have your choice in providers!  I personally use Google Reader, but there are many other options.  Most blogs, twitter feeds etc. have the option of subscribing to an RSS feed.  You may recognize it by the small orange square with the white curved lines...  Clicking on this button will allow you to follow this feed in your RSS reader.  This way you have one place to look to all of the most recent blog/twitter updates from your friends.

What is Missing:

There are some features of Facebook that are not replicated in my plan, but that may be for the better.  I will be so glad to never hear about the sheep that wandered off someone's farm.  The social network is missing, but lets be honest about that.  Most of us have filled in our social network from our past more than we would like to, and if someone wants to find my blog or twitter feed then they can simply search for me on Google.

There are plans in the works for a open source solution to Facebook.  Without a centralized entity controlling our data we can share and feel more in control, but the honest truth is that once shared we are never in control.  These guys are well funded and have some great ideas about an alternative to Facebook that puts 100% of the control in the user's hands.

What you Gain:

Following this type of plan does not put all of your digital "eggs" in one basket.  Facebook is not alone, and many of the services that I have described above are corporate entities completely capable of making bad decisions with your data.  BUT, by not relying on one for everything you are free to move one bit to another provider without having to change everything.  Further by not having everything in one place you are doing less to empower one company with all of your data.

To Conclude:

It is important that we share our information responsibly, and that means taking a long hard look at the companies that we are trusting with our data.  The biggest reason for me taking the steps to deactivate my account is that even though I have taken the time and the care to set privacy settings for my account Facebook has a history of setting those to a conveniently open default when it wants to roll out an "update."  There is no opt-in for Facebook because they survie on me sharing more and more private and personal information.  I would encourage you to have a look at the article in Time Magazine that made me and many of my friends realize that Facebook was not something that we wanted to be a part of.

My Google Phone Interview

A researcher in networking contacted my advisor a couple weeks ago requesting any leads on possible summer interns.  My advisor recommended me for the job based on the fact that the research that was being done at Google is very similar to my recent work.  I polished my resume and sent it off.  A day later I was contacted by a recruiter who took some more information and scheduled me for two technical phone interviews.  These are not the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" type of interviews.  These are the "prove P=NP and write up a C function to solve all the NP problems while you are at it" kind of interviews.  This meant that my immediate concern was preparing for the possible onslaught of questions.  

While preparing for the interview I was also preparing for a presentation in my networking class on "why use delay based protocols?"  One of the assigned papers (the one that I spent the most time working on) was the TCP Vegas paper, written by Larry Brakmo.  I found the paper very interesting and in fact there are a lot of similar issues in the paper that I worked on most recently.  So I know this paper, and I mean I REALLY know this paper well.  Guess who was my second interviewer of the day, and guess who was so focused on the interview that he failed to make the connection?  I had the opportunity to talk about  using delays to the guy who invented the idea!  Doh!

Both of my interviewers were exceptionally sharp, and polite.  While I would be supper excited to get an internship at Google I am flattered just to have had the chance to interview.  If I am not offered a position I think I will continue to try again, because the interview was challenging in a good way.  Not to mention the fact that you just may have the opportunity to speak with someone that you otherwise would not.

So Dr. Brakmo if you ever happen to see this, just know that when I said I didn't have any questions about Google that I should have taken the opportunity to ask at least one of my questions about Vegas.  No I am not going to list them here just incase I will get the chance to talk with him again.

The bottom line on the interview is this, as far as TCP goes I know my stuff, but that does not mean I know everything there is to know about networking and I will work hard to figure out the answer.  That being said, lets just hope that makes up for me pulling Null for my programming question.

OS X Time Machine Lacking in Options

My time tested method for backing up my laptop was to run a Bash script that would rsync various directories to my Linux server at home.  The nice things about this were:

• I was in complete control of what got backed up and how.
• I could work on things just as easily on the Linux server as I could on my OS X based laptop.
• Copying things back over to the laptop was a cinch.
• I could schedule it to run as frequently or infrequently as I wanted by using a chron job.

This method of backup worked wonders for me, but my wife did was not onboard with using Linux.  I was intrigued by the osX86, so I hacked a mac.  It works great!  It is stable, fast, and easy to use.  I had not been able to use time-machine for backups before, but I thought I would give it a shot.  I set it up on my laptop to backup to the desktop and when I say I set it up, there was very little to configure.  I know that is the idea, to make it dead simple for everyone, but at least give me an advanced options pannel or something.  Here are some of the things that bother me that I would like to change:

• It tires to backup my laptop when I am away from home, and this would not be a problem if it were not for the resources that it uses.  It seems to access the disk so heavily that it slows other applications.
• You can exclude some directories from being backed up, but that is about the extent of the options.

I am not going to be one of the people that complain about a problem and don't suggest possible solutions, so here are some things that I would like to see.

• Backup only when connected to my home network (can be recognized by subnet).
• Allow choice of how a directory should be backed up.  Some I would like to be backed up more often than others, and some I would only like a working copy (shorter history).
• Schedule backups to only happen durring certain times, or not to occur when the computer is very busy.
• Allow for backing up to a local temporary directory when I am away from home and then commit that when I return.
• Allow to chose a server based on location.  So it would back up to one server when I am at work and another when I am at home.

Again, this is just a list of ideas of features that would be nice to have.  I am sure that there are programs out there that do all of these things, and to that my original backup methods do just that.  I would like to see some of these options to be available for my wife's computer.  So Steve Jobs, I hope this helps.

Droid applications

Here is a list of the applications on my Droid.  I have been asked by a few people about recommendations for cool apps, so I thought the best place to start would be just listing the ones that I have installed on my phone.

• Advanced Task Killer Free - I used this more when I first got my phone, but after a while I have begun to realize that it really does not make that big of a difference in the overall performance of the phone.  I still give this a go every once and a while when it starts to feel kludgy.  <-- I am now using ES Task manager for this.
• Amazon - never used...
• Astrid - I use this all of the time with an online service that I thought I wouldn't like but have come to love RTM
• Barcode Scanner - I have used this a handfull of times and it works well.  I even used it at a big box store to look up a price.  It found their website and tada...
• ConnectBot - used for remote ssh sessions
• Detexify - draw with your finger on the screen and it gives you the LaTeX code for it.
• DockRunner - because I did't want to spend $30 on the charging dock.
• DroidLight - I use this at least twice a day!
• ES File Explorer - tool that I don't use often but is a must have when you need it.
• ES Task Manager - I use this to close down programs that are running in the background.  One of the flaws of the Android platform as I see it, is that there is not a clear way to close a program as opposed to having it run in the background.  
• GDocs - I hope to use this more as I move away from using MS office
• Gmote
• Goggles - cool concept but not very useful
• Google Sky Map - again cool but...
• gStrings - program for tuning a guitar, but I assume that it could be used for any musical instrument.  
• Google Voice - very nice
• GTalk Updater - wish I didn't have it
• IP Cam Viewer Lite - used for nanny cams when we are out
• IP Machine
• Key Ring - keep my vic card and such on it, and my wallet it thiner.  Now I don't even get odd looks from the cashiers anymore as I am guessing more people are using them.
• Labyrinth Lite - I found this after my family was talking about the old game at christmas.  Even my grandmother enjoyed this game.
• Listen - used on the bus to listen to npr stuff.
• Locale - handy for making sure my ringer is turned off and such  <-- No longer free and I don't feel like it is worth the $10 that they want for it now.
• GPS Plug-in
• Sync Plug-in
• Tweet Plug-in
• Maps - has the navigation that has been useful running around town
• Maverick Lite - cool, but unused as a compas
• Metal Detector - fun party trick
• MountUSB - used for adding music to droid
• My Tracks - cool for tracking exercise distances
• NetCounter
• NetTools
• OpenSudoku - fun
• Orienteer - allows to see raw GPS data
• OurGroceries - my wife has the iPhone/iPod version and this makes shopping a lot easier
• Pandora - I only use on wifi, but I love Pandora radio
• Photoshop.com Mobile - only used once, but it works
• Pkt Auctions eBay - might use more if I wasn't broke
• Places Directory - used to find food while traveling
• Power Save - nice widget that provides the same functions that are built into 2.1
• RTM - the official app for the RTM website, it is a pay service (yearly) but I am starting to think that it is worth it.  Their to do list is fantastic, by far the best I have ever seen.
• The Weather Channel - check for dress every morning
• Twidroid - used all the time.
• Whack-A-Droid

I am making this list for my own reference as I am going to unlock the phone and load the nexus one rom to it.  I will add a post to update on how that goes.

Suggested chat program...

A friend recently turned me onto a program that can intergrate many of the chat services that we use into one window. I liked that iChat does this somewhat, but it lacks some features that I would love to have... Primarily I hate having separate buddy lists for various accounts.

The program is Adium (http://adium.im/) and it supports a lot of differnt chat protocols, including Facebook. I think I may try it out in the coming weeks, but I welcome comments from anyone that is currently using it. If it means that I can use Facebook to keep in touch with people without having to see one more Mafia Wars or Farm update I am game to add another piece of software...

On a side note, I just figured out that I can block all posts from an app on Facebook! This may not be news to the rest of you, but I don't care that "a sheep wandered off of your farm while you were looking for the golden craps dice!"

One of the best T-Shirts ever...

I am not a big fan of Facebook, and more and more I find that it just highlights the aspects of humanity that annoy me. Today it did offer something good...


This site has a few more, and based on a recommendation from my friend Robert I also found a couple good ones here too.

Making my mac do what I want... NOW!

So I am going to have to come back to this later and add more to it, but the basic idea is this:

I used to use a program called Quicksilver to search for things on my mac and to launch programs that I don't want to keep lying around in the dock. I noticed that it made my machine slower to login and it could hog resources...

I decided to try out the native OS X solution, the spotlight, and much to my delight it was speedy and pretty well done. Since it is already running by default, it is not using any more system resources. Then I thought, what if I could search google and the web from it... So I found this:

Google Importer 1.0.1
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/spotlight/googleimporter.html

I will try and followup on how well it works...

WELL, that was short... At least the website saved me the trouble of downloading it, becasue when I tried it informed me that it was not compatible with OS X Leopard (Tiger only). So now I have to find another way to search quickly. I have heard some negative reviews of the google desktop search... Oh well :-(

"the U.S. and Canada are the third world of mobile phone networks"

I was just reading an interesting article on the NTY website about the overload that the iPhone is placing on the ATT&T network:

Customers Angered as iPhones Overload AT&T

I understand the need for a company to make money, really I do, but at a certain point companies need to invest in maintaining an advantage over their competition in the future. I would own an iPhone today if I had not had such a crappy experience with Cingular/ATT&T years ago (almost 10 years!), but with that in mind I will continue to use my palm with Verizon. My palm is fast and not without its flaws but it is a known, and I have heard that things have not improved much on the ATT&T network since my experience.

If you are not a frequent visitor to my blog then you may not know that I am a computer science graduate student, and that my area of research interest is in networking and distributed systems. I should be very clear in saying that there is no silver bullet and no perfect network. They all have their own advantages and faults. Take the home access to the Internet in the United States as an example. I have hear rumors that in parts of Europe and Asia one can get a network (Internet) connection that offers roughly 10 times faster download speed and an amazing 400 times faster on upload. This connection can be had for as little as $10 us and I pay almost 5 times that amount for a connection that is much MUCH slower. Am I angry because I want a faster connection? No, I am angry because I pay so much for a "slow" connection. For most of us, we don't utilize a substantial portion of the connection we have. Like my friend Mike J. says... As long as the tubes keep the [media] flowing ;-)

I don't want to get into a debate about why the US is a leader in innovation, but lags so far behind in implementing and deploying those innovations, but I would like to see us do a better job of doing things right. Maybe if we get our priorities strait...

So I guess its my own humble opinion that it is not the iPhone that is the adversary, but a network that is not up to global standards. Hell we invented the internet 40 years ago, you think we could get it right.

Tattoos, Piercings, Punk Music and Facebook Oh MY!

I am not quite sure what made me think about this, but one has to wonder what the future holds for our children. The most obvious is the house of cards that we have left for them. At some point we have to stop living as a culture with the hope that if we ignore problems that they will go away or that the next generation will come up with a way to solve the problem without any sort of sacrifice or real effort, but I digress.

My point is much more benign than the cooking planet or the flaws of greed based capitalistic society. I am just curious about what happens when a generation of parents have tattoos, and punk music? Have our peers not already pierced every imaginable body part? We have even embraced the cultural differences. So what is left for our children to do to assert their individualism? How do they tell the world that they are not their parents?

I guess if I have to look to history for any sort of clue one might expect something like the 1980's reaction to the 1960's and 1970's social rebellions. It brought with it a generation of social conservatism...

It makes me think that maybe I need to take out my earrings, cover my tattoos, and start Bible thumping so that my kid can have the joy and youthful pride of not being a carbon copy of his parents without having to resort to joining the young republicans or ending up with a job on Wall St.