Computers

When I was growing up I read a lot of Science Fiction. I still do actually.

Lots of things that I read about have come to pass. Science Fiction has been an amazing predictor of new technologies and gadgets.

For example Wikipedia has a short list of inventions predicted by Robert Heinlein that have come to pass. The list includes:

• Automatic light switches (from "The Man Who Sold The Moon")
  
• Hand dryers (from "Coventry")
  
• Drafting software (from "The Door Into Summer")
  
• Mobile phones (from "Space Cadet" and "Assignment in Eternity")
  
• Moving walkways (called "slidewalks" in "Space Cadet" and "slideways" in "Beyond This Horizon")
  
• Solar panels (from "The Roads Must Roll" and "Coventry")
  
• Waldoes (remote manipulators) (from "Waldo")
  
• Screensavers (from "Stranger In A Strange Land")
  
• The San Francisco-Oakland BART Transbay Tube (from "Citizen of the Galaxy")
  
• Waterbeds (from "Double Star", "Stranger In A Strange Land", "Beyond This Horizon", and "Waldo")
  
• Vehicle remote keyless system (called a "magic wand" in "The Number of the Beast")
  
• Online newspapers (from "Beyond This Horizon")
  

One thing I don't see on that list is Pocket Computers. I know that I have read about Pocket Computers in various SF stories, but I'm not sure if they were Heinlein stories.

In any case with the development of the latest Smart Phones (including the iPhone) I believe that we have achieved Pocket Computers.

Laptops and Netbooks are very powerful, but are still pretty bulky. And they always will be as long as we need keyboard input and large displays. They have their place and now that the batteries have a reasonable life (3+ hours) I love having one.

But the Smart Phones...

I am very impressed with my Droid. We joke at work that when three or four of us are sitting around with our phones that we have more compute power at the table than they use to run the space shuttle. But it's not really a joke because it's true. The space shuttle is still run by 1980's vintage IBM 5150 computers with 1MB of RAM.

I'm pretty sure we have more compute power around the table than they had at all of NASA when they were running the Apollo missions.

One thing you need to understand is that I was born in 1962 - that officially makes me old. It also means that the Personal Computer didn't arrive until after I graduated from High School. I didn't grow up with computers in the house. I got to take a basic programming course in Jr. High School using a teletype hooked to a mainframe through a 300 baud modem and I loved it, but the Apple II didn't arrive until a few years later.

Cell phones were not around until much later either. Sure, they have been around since the early 80's, but no one I knew had one until the mid to late 90's or so. I didn't get my first cell phone until 1999 - after swearing I would never want one.

So going from starting out programming on a teletype to working on this blog entry on my cell phone - that's a lot of change.

For the younger generation - including my children and many of my co-workers - smart phones are just another cool gadget.

But for me - who grew up reading SF and dreaming about the future - smart phones are an indicator that the future is arriving.

I now realize that I've been looking for the Pocket Computer for quite a while. I got a Sharp ZQ-2200 Electronic Organizer with a whopping 32KB of storage when they came out. (Still have it actually.) It's actually not a bad bit of kit - it has an address book, calendar, clock, calculator and a qwerty keyboard. But it's really just a glorified address book.

I got a Sharp Wizard OZ-7000 when they came out (still have that too). It's like a ZQ-2200 on steroids. But still really an address book and calendar.

The Apple Newton was pretty close to the Pocket Computer - and ahead of it's time, but then Apple screwed the pooch on marketing and it died before it could get good. I always wanted one, but never owned one.

I thought the Palm Pilot was getting pretty close to the Pocket Computer. I bought a Pilot 5000. The Pilot was different than the Sharp Organizers. It had hand writing recognition - that really worked. You could download and install applications to do all sorts of things. I loved my Palm Pilots. I ended up with a Palm III and then a Palm V. But then they started putting phones into them and charging what I thought was an outrageous amount of money for them. When my Palm V died I stopped caring about Pocket Computers. I actually started using a paper based organizer system for a while, but lost interest in that too.

Lots of my co-workers and friends have iPhones. Don't get me wrong, I think iPhones fit my definition of a Pocket Computer. But I have huge issues with Apple's licensing agreements and corporate attitude. I would never buy an iPhone or an iPad. I am a huge proponent of the "I bought it, I own it, I get to do with it what I like" attitude. Which is about 180 degrees from Apple's.

I'm a huge proponent of Open Source. Of being able to tinker. I'm vehemently anti-DRM. I firmly believe that if it's a computer, I should be able to run whatever I like on it. With the iPhone that's just not possible. With the iPhone they censor the applications. With the iPhone they dictate what languages you can write in. With the iPhone they make you jump through hoops to get your application into the market.

With an Android phone I can go download the SDK for free. I can write an application for my phone in whatever language I like. I can install that application on my phone and run it. And I can make it available to everyone else in the world without having to jump through any hoops.

And think about all the technology and cool stuff that is crammed into a Smart Phone these days:

• A GPS that can tell you where you are - anywhere in the world!
  
• Mapping and navigation software that can use that GPS and give you turn-by-turn directions to any address.
  
• Voice Recognition that can be used to dial the phone, look up an address or search the web.
  
• Web browsing
  
• Email
  
• Appointment Calendar
  
• Send instant messages - in a variety of formats - to anyone in the world
  
• A camera - the camera in my Droid has a 5MP sensor - that's the same pixel count as my Canon Digital Rebel SLR. Of course the SLR takes much higher quality photos - but a 5MP camera in a phone? Amazing. (Yes, I know there are higher pixel counts out there, but still.)
  
• An amazing amount of storage - my Droid comes with a 16GB Micro SD card and there is a 32GB card coming. 32GB in a phone! I still have hard drives in computers that are smaller than that!
  
• An endless list of applications including:
  
  • Databases
    
  • Music Searching (like Shazam)
    
  • Games - tons and tons of different types
    
  • A map of the stars in the sky
    
  • An editor to edit MS Word and Excel documents
    
  • Full function scientific calculator
    
  • WiFi Scanners and Signal meters
    
  • Programming languages
    
  • and the list goes on...
    
  
  

I have to declare that the current generation of Smart Phones have reached the Pocket Computer realm and will only continue to get better. Any Smart Phone out there with the correct application could perform any of the Pocket Computer functions that I can recall from SF stories.

Sitting at lunch today I was musing about how cool it would be to be able to program on my phone in Perl.

I have one interpreter on the phone already - Frink - and while it's and amazing tool it's not a language I am as familiar with.

So I did a Google search (on my phone) for Perl and Android and lo and behold there is a project called the Android Scripting Environment and they currently have interpreters for Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript and Tcl!

Astounding.

So of course I loaded it right up!

Here is the current list of apps I have on my Droid and my comments about them - It's a long list...

Roughly grouped by category. Rated 1 - 5 smilely faces. There are no zero ratings since I took those apps off and have forgotten them already.

- Eh. It's worth keeping on the phone until you need more space.
- A semi-useful or fun app. Could use some improvement.
- Most of these are apps I have installed, like the looks of, but have not used much yet.
- Very well designed and useful or fun apps. Almost a must-have app.
- Must have applications. These are the apps that make having a Droid worthwhile.

So far I have only purchased two apps. Everything else I've found has been free.

As many of the links as possible go to pages with QR codes on them so you can use ShopSavvy to easily install them.

I just created an xls spreadsheet in OpenOffice on my Ubuntu laptop, put it in my Dropbox folder, installed Documents To Go on my Droid, and edited the spreadsheet there!

Now I'm blogging about it using the web browser on my Droid.

OMG!! I think I might have a Nerdgasm!!

And you know what? It just works...

Wow, a blog post. It's been a while.

If you read my Facebook wall, or follow me on Twitter, you know I have a Droid now. I love it. One of my friends asked me (in an email) about it and this is the reply I sent. I thought it would make a good blog post, so here it is.

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I love my Droid. One major thing I like is the real keyboard. Also check the 3G coverage map, AT&T's coverage sucks ass outside the major corridors. Normal cell coverage works, but no, or slow data.

As far as Droid vs iPhone, I have nothing against the iPhone as hardware, it's a nice piece of kit. It's Apple's business practices that will keep me from buying anything from them.

The other major plus as far as I'm concerned is the tight integration with Google - my contacts are stored in my Gmail account - edit them on the phone and they are instantly (more or less) updated on Gmail and vice-versa. It made moving my contacts to the phone really easy - I exported a CSV from Outlook, massaged it in Excel and imported it into Gmail. Viola - my contacts were on the phone.

Also I started this reply on my Droid, saved it as a draft and am now working on it on the Gmail web interface. I think that's pretty stinking cool.

As for battery life, yes, it depends. Like all cell phones, if you are in a poor (or no) coverage area it will burn through the battery really fast. But you can disable the cell radio and just use the local apps if you know you are out of coverage for a while. Under normal daily use I get about 16 hours out of it (I unplug it at 6:30am and plug it back in at 11:00pm or so - and there is still battery left.) No smart phone is going to match the battery life (days) of a normal cell phone. You will want a car charger. You will want to retrofit a charger to the motorcycle if you go on long trips (I plan on getting another car charger, tearing it apart and putting it in my tank bag.)

The GPS is pretty nice - but so is the one on the iPhone. Having Google Maps is cool, but if you have no data coverage it can't d/l the maps while you are on the go. They are talking about caching the Google maps, but it's not there yet. Also, you don't appear to be able to modify the suggested route at this time although forum posts suggest you may have been able to in the past or maybe can on other phones.

I bought ($30! - so far the only app I have paid for) a GPS program called CoPilot Live that has maps loaded on the phone and interfaces with a PC based app. I'm not sure if I want to try and use my Droid as a GPS on my motorcycle or not. There is a weatherproof case I found for $35 online...

As far as the apps go, there are tons. So far I have found everything I wanted to do (and more.) Some apps are great, some are good and some you uninstall after trying them once. But there are lots of free ones to choose from.

I have taken photos with it and uploaded them to Twitter and Facebook - it's dead simple. I have not looked at the photos in an image editing program yet, so I don't know what the quality is - I'm guessing not great. It's a 5MP camera, but it's got a tiny lens - and the low-light photos suck. But it does have a "flash" that is really, really bright. (No flash on the iPhone.)

It has an MP3 player built in, but doesn't interface with iTunes. But it's certainly easy to get the songs on it - you just plug the USB cable into your PC, mount it as a USB drive and drag and drop the mp3s onto it. You can even drag them out of iTunes right onto it.

The Droid comes with a 16GB SD card. And a 32GB card is starting to become available. And it's user swappable, as is the battery. (Neither are true on the iPhone.)

There is not much fuckery involved. It just works. It's pretty simple to use.

It seems pretty sturdy - I've dropped it twice: once in the grocery store - about three feet to the concrete, and once at home - about three feet to the wooden floor - and no damage. I do have one tiny little ding in the screen (probably from one of the drops) so get a screen protector right away - I have one on it now.

I would recommend it. As a matter of fact, I suggested my cousin buy one and she told me she didn't want all that stuff on her phone and bought something else (not an iPhone.) She hated it, returned it and bought a Droid. She loves it.

There are other geeky reasons to like the Droid, but I know you probably don't care that I can open a terminal on my phone and run linux commands, or the fact that I can tether it to my laptop and get internet access through it. And the fact that I can do all this (and more) without having to "jailbreak" or "root" the phone...

As far as should you buy an iPhone or a Droid, that's something I can't answer. Obviously I chose to buy a Droid.

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After writing this email I went looking for information about iTunes and the Android phones and found something called DoubleTwist that is supposed to read your iTunes library and sync it with anything. I think it's supposed to be an iTunes replacement actually. I'll be downloading that at home and trying it.

Oh, and you know that Steve Jobs said "Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone." right?

That might be the deal breaker for some people.

Look! A blog post!

This morning I posted a link to an anti-DRM comic on my Facebook feed.

There was a comment thread that I wanted to save, so I decided to put it into a blog post.

A friend posted the following comment (slightly edited):

A. I use that very same system to legally download audiobooks from Henn Cty Library and once you figure it out the first time it's fine.

B. I think that DRM is meant to protect the rights of the artist and isn't just something created by lawyers to bug us.

C. DRM wouldn't need to be so complicated if people were honest and just simply didn't desire to steal copyright content.

My response was as follows:

A. I'm glad it works for you. But why should I have to "figure it out" to listen to an audiobook? But what about the people who don't run Windows? Can I listen to these audio books on my Linux laptop? I doubt it. Also, any extra software you have to install adds more complexity to the computer. I already have at least three ways to play mp3s on my computer. Can you listen to these audiobooks on your non-iPod MP3 player? Can you burn them to a CD and listen to them in your car? These are all legal uses, but the DRM stops you from doing them. Additionally, DRM software quite often slows the whole system down, or worse, has rootkits or backdoors in it. Google for Sony rootkit sometime.

B. DRM is designed to prevent consumers from using content in legal ways, not protect the artists. When you buy a book, it's yours to do what you like with (within reasonable copyright limits). You can lend it do someone - try that with a DRM audiobook. You can sell it - try that with a DRM audio book. "But we are talking about a library book here" you say. Okay, when you check a book out of the library you can't sell it, but you can lend it to a friend. DRM is a product of the media corporations and is designed to cripple your rights as a consumer so they can make more money. The media giants scream about piracy, but there have been many studies that show its less prevalent then they say it is. As a matter of fact, studies have shown that many people who download music illegally go out and buy the albums. Other studies have shown that releasing content in non-DRM forms results in MORE sales, not fewer. There are many artists that have spoken out against DRM and there are even artists that would like to release their art in non-DRM formats but the media corporations will not let them.

C. See my comments in B. But also, why do you think it is acceptable to punish the legal consumers because other people do illegal things? DRM does not stop anyone from downloading the content illegally. I guarantee you that any audiobook you download in DRM format from the library is available in non-DRM format on the internet. How is the DRM protecting the content? It's not. All DRM can be and is broken. The only thing that DRM does is add hassle for the legal consumers. Why is this acceptable?

DRM and the media lobbyists also brought us the DMCA - one of the worst laws ever passed.

If you are truly interested in why so many people are anti-DRM you can start your research at these links:


http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2007/02/how_to_explain_/

http://www.eff.org/issues/drm

http://www.learnoutloud.com/content/blog/archives/2006/11/the_top_10_argu.html

And for information about the DMCA and why it's so bad, you can start here:

http://www.anti-dmca.org/whats-wrong.html

Hey, a technical blog post with real, useful information in it!

I was trying to get a server setup at work with 802.1q VLAN tagging and it wasn't working. It turns out that if you don't want to use a native VLAN configuration on your switch the doco is all WRONG. I could not find anything on teh Google that explained the correct configuration for this to work.

First off, you need the 'vconfig' package installed. All 2.6 kernels support VLAN tagging, so you don't need anything special there.

If you have a native VLAN configured on the switch, it's easy. You just configure your NIC device (eg. eth0) to use the native VLAN and then add the tagged VLAN information in an ifcfg-eth0.tag file for each VLAN. That works as described all over the net.

But if you don't want to have a native VLAN configured on your switch then you have an issue.

Even the RedHat doco is wrong. They say that you can strip out all the lines in your ifcfg-eth0 file leaving just these two:

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes

Then you create your tagged interface files (eg. ifcfg-eth0.9) like this:

DEVICE=eth0.9
BOOTPROTO=static
BROADCAST=10.9.255.255
HWADDR=00:22:19:19:52:BB
IPADDR=10.9.0.100
NETMASK=255.255.0.0
NETWORK=10.9.0.0
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
VLAN=yes

But this DOESN'T work. When you restart the networking stack it tosses an error about wireless networking (?) and then the VLAN creation errors out with "eth0 device doesn't exist" errors because eth0 doesn't come up.

WTF?

After beating my head on the desk for a bit, I thought "maybe it's trying to do a DHCP request or something for eth0 and failing." And that's what it appears to be doing.

Adding the line:

BOOTPROTO=none

to the ifcfg-eth0 file makes it all work just fine.

I got an email from a user on the FreeNAS help forum asking me if I had tested the write speed of my ZFS RAID array.

He was upset that he was only getting 45 MB/second.

So I tested it:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=mytestfile.out bs=1000 count=1000000

1000000+0 records in
1000000+0 records out
1000000000 bytes transferred in 49.676133 secs (20130391 bytes/sec)

Pretty abysmal.

I'm running on three 500GB IDE drives plugged into three Promise Ultra100 TX2 dual channel IDE controllers on a 2.3GHz Xeon with 1 GB of RAM, so it's not the speediest of hardware.

Just for grins I tested the read performance by reversing the dd command:

# dd of=/dev/null if=mytestfile.out bs=1000
1000000+0 records in
1000000+0 records out
1000000000 bytes transferred in 21.032432 secs (47545619 bytes/sec)

As you would expect, the read performance is much better than the write.

I had run a whole bunch of tests on the hardware when I was building my OpenFiler box, I suppose I should run those tests again using FreeNAS.

I'll have to figure out how to get bonnie++ running under FreeBSD.

I built my FreeNAS box last night. Then I built it again tonight.

I installed the three new 500 Gig hard drives, dug up an old CD ROM drive to boot off of and tried to install FreeNAS version 0.70 (BETA) to a 2GB USB flash drive. The FreeNAS doco claims it will run from a 32MB USB stick.

That didn't work. I'm not sure what the problem was. The conf directory and config file got written to the USB drive, but when it tried to lay down the boot image it failed.

After trying that a couple of times I just decided to install the OS onto an 80 Gig hard drive that I had used for the OpenFiler OS drive. That worked fine.

Installation from the CD is pretty quick. Then you set the IP address on the console and point your web browser at it. It's all GUI from there. (Well, almost all.)

The web based interface is beautiful. All the pages have the same look and feel, all the controls work the same way. It's very nice.

After setting all the drives up in a RAIDz1 array (RAID5 I guess) and make the shares and such, I decided to make some tuning changes per HarryD's suggestions.

After putzing around for a bit and messing things up, I discovered that my windows machines didn't have rights to write to the CIFS shares. I figured I'd messed up something and maybe a reboot would help, so I rebooted the FreeNAS box.

After a few minutes I tried to reload the web GUI. No-go. Hmm.

I head to the basement and on the console I see: kernel panic - rebooting in 15 seconds

Oops. Looks like I busted it. So I turned it off and quit for the night. I'm going to blame the tuning changes I made, because I made them without understanding the implications.

This evening I reinstalled the OS and rebuild the RAID and shares. It's all working fine except I had to change the group ownership on the shares (using the CLI) so I could write to them from my windows boxes. There are no permissions really, anyone can write anywhere. Fine for home use, but the SAMBA/AD integration still isn't really there (this was a problem with OpenFiler for me too.)

So now I'm rsyncing my data back. When I copied the data off the OpenFiler box I plugged the USB drive into the front of the server and rsynced it directly. Unfortunately the server only supports USB 1.1 with a max speed of 12 Mb/s. Painfully slow. It took a week to sync around 400GB of data.

Now I have the USB drive plugged into my desktop (USB 2.0) and am using the Cygwin rsync client to send the data back.

The graph on the FreeNAS box shows that I am shoving the data in at a rate of almost 55 Mb/s! Whee!

According to this article, FreeNAS v0.69 includes BitTorrent services!

Is there anything FreeNAS can't do?

My new hard drives should arrive today, but I don't think I'll be able to build my new FreeNAS server until tomorrow at the earliest.

UPDATED

Apparently there isn't anything FreeNAS can't do. Here is a forum posting about how to add a Usenet client (sabnzbd) to FreeNAS.

Da-amn!