IPv4 - Claw back the Class A's from corporations!

(reposting my article comment from here:)
NetworkWorld: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

I'm sure you've heard all about how IPv4 is dying. It's running out of available numbers. IPv6 is touted as the big solution, but it's cumbersome, complicated, and not backwards compatible with IPv4.

But IPv4 can survive. It just needs some small changes.

I hereby propose the CIDR 8 / Class A clawback: "We were here first, so we're claiming 16,777,216 addresses (1/256th of the entire address space) for ourselves! You can't have it, nyah nyah!" Oh really, IBM, Apple, MIT, General Electric, Ford, Halliburton?

Wikipedia article: List of assigned /8 IPv4 address blocks


New rule: If you're not a regional address assignor (APNIC, ARIN, RIPE, etc), you have to give up your IPv4 /8 and get more sane /24 allocations or smaller.

New rule: If you're not a regional address assignor you cannot be assigned anything larger than an IPv4 /24 (256 addresses). Consecutive blocks of /24 are fine. You cannot be reassigned more than 16 /24 blocks (4096 addresses) within your original /8.

New rule: Anyone who refuses to release control of their /8 after five years will be made unroutable except for the first /24 of that space (ex, Apple 17.0.0.0 /24), and the rest of the addresses reassigned by force.

They might claim a decades-old reliance on a /8 network architecture, but this argument is completely blown away by the fact that they could switch to the dedicated private 10.0.0.0 /8 range and still have full end-to-end connectivity across the entire 16 million address space.

Cellular Adaptation: the real problem of addiction

I think the problem of drug addiction (opiates, alcohol, and many more) is really cellular adaptation.

Your cells have a programmed way of operating in your DNA that they try to follow as much as possible. Things like opiates screw up that operation, and for a cell, operating outside normal metabolic parameters can lead to death of either the cell or the entire organism (you), so your cells do what they can to suppress the foreign substance, and try go back to operating normally.

If this means developing antibodies to destroy the foreign substance, or finding ways to adjust their normal metabolic processes to adapt to the problem, your cells will do it.

Being blissed out of your mind on opiates may feel good to "you" (the consciousness that your cells are sustaining in their neural net that we call the brain) but while you're doing that to yourself, your cells are trying to purge and block the drugs to try to keep themselves / you alive.

In nature, an animal that is blissed out of its mind has the potential to end up very much dead from thirst, starvation, or getting killed by a predator, so it's in your cells' own best interest to keep you as un-blissed-out as possible.


It takes time for your cells to figure out countermeasures to foreign substances that screw up metabolism, but if your body is flooded with the substance they will respond more quickly to control the problem and stop it from affecting normal operations.

Therefore, restricting dosage to the smallest effective amount, reduces the likelihood of your cells adapting, and reduces the likelihood of you needing ever greater amounts to experience the same effect.





Addiction is probably the result of lingering effects of cells trying to combat the problem. You are blissing yourself out of your mind, and meanwhile your own cells are conducting a massive antidrug suppression to get rid of the foreign substance and stop its effects on your metabolism.

Eventually the drug wears off but your cells continue the assault, and now your metabolism goes too far the other way (leading to your general discomfort and suffering, leading to cravings for more of the drug), until your cells figure that out too and learn to back off on their suppression efforts (the withdrawal process), and your battle-scarred metabolic battlefield is finally able to return to more or less normal operation.

But, the cellular weapons of mass drug destruction remain armed and ready for attack at any sign of the invader, which is why just one dose or drink for a recovered addict, can push you (and your cells) over the edge again into all-out war (and withdrawal symptoms) all over again.





So, how do we really combat addiction? Well we could probably take a look at what exactly cells are doing when they try to adapt to an addicting substance. What metabolic changes occur in cells, and what are the specific countermeasures they take to suppress the substance, leading to addiction?

Is there some way to slow down or stop this cellular adaptation, without damaging cellular metabolism in general?

If so, then to keep painkillers effective, in addition to the actual drug, you would take a second chemical that counteracts the cellular adaptation process, and keeps the drug in full effect every time you take it.

Is it possible to reverse the cellular adaptation process to addicting substances, without damaging the other metabolic defense mechanisms?

How and where is the adaptive information stored, and how do cells draw upon this information and use it to combat the foreign substance in the future?

Is this information encoded in similar ways across entirely different organisms, or is it encoded uniquely to each organism? (Is a generalized approach to suppressing the drug tolerance / cellular adaptation process possible?)



These are all extremely interesting questions, potentially with extremely profitable answers to the addictive-drug painkiller industry.

But I am not a cellular-metabolism microbiologist, so I'm likely not going to be doing anything in this area of research. However, it is my hope this post might lead someone else to do the research.

Have the US Dept of Defense take over Windows XP updating

Mr. Ballmer,

 

Although Microsoft is planning to discontinue support for Windows XP in April 2014, it is thought that there's still at least 500 million people using it. When support is discontinued, it is expected that XP will eventually become a virus and botnet-infested mess, as new software exploits are discovered that can not and will not be fixed.

 

Microsoft is obviously interested in making money for its shareholders, so it does not make sense for the company to continue to provide updates for its obsolete software releases. But it is in the best interest of the US federal government and our national defense that Windows XP bugs still get fixed, even if Microsoft doesn't want to foot the bill anymore.

 

There much talk about "cybersecurity" and protecting our national defense by providing free software updates and virus protection to the poor or the technically unskilled. Dropping XP support seems an extremely bad idea for the overall cybersecurity of our country, so perhaps the US government should step in and take over the costs of updating XP from Microsoft.

 

What would it cost for the US government to fully take over the XP update process? Updating could still be handled by Microsoft employees, who salaries are now instead directly paid for by the US Dept of Defense.

 

If Microsoft wishes to completely wash its hands of XP, would you be willing to sell or transfer the intellectual property rights to the US government so that they have full access to the source for debugging and update purposes?

 

Updates paid for and provided by the US government could be handled through the standard Windows update process that Microsoft has already established, though with a new "opt-out" option if people do not wish to continue receiving XP updates that are explicitly paid for and provided by the US government.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

- Dale Mahalko

 

Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse 1.0A is a piece of garbage

Some buying decisions you eventually come to regret, and the Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse 1.0A is definitely a regrettable purchase. I unfortunately purchased a large number of these several years ago, when computers were first making the transition from ball mice to optical mice, and I needed an inexpensive way to get optical mice for a large number of computers that still had ball mice..

If you associate Microsoft with poorly designed products that sort of halfway do what they're supposed to do, the Basic Optical Mouse 1.0A definitely fits the description.

It requires no drivers, and simply installs as an "HID compliant mouse". It works fine..... most of the time. When idle, the pointer stays still as you would expect.

However, on occasion when moving the mouse around, the onscreen pointer suddenly shoots off in some random direction at extremely high speed, completely out of your control. If you do a web search for the Basic Optical Mouse 1.0A and the word "random" you will find it comes up several times, with people constantly trying to find drivers or whatever to solve this.

For 1st person 3D game players, usually they end up suddenly looking at the sky or at their feet, and spinning around wildly for a few moments when the mouse suddenly malfunctions like this.

I have seen this problem on literally 50+ different Microsoft Basic Optical Mice 1.0A. There's nothing to be done about it. The hardware for all of them is apparently defective and there is nothing that can be done about it...

... other than replacing it with a different brand or model. I've never seen this intermittent random tracking problem happen with the Microsoft optical mouse that has a bright red indicator on the front of the base.

If you either dispose of or send your defective Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse 1.0A to a recycler, do the world a favor and cut the USB cord off, so that no one else looking to salvage old computer hardware has to suffer from using it.

Solar-thermal / low-temp boiler / turbine power generation?

(Apparently this is a ridiculously obscure technology discussion so this post is going to sit dormant. Maybe people searching for this topic will find this post and respond.)



I am looking for a low-power high-efficiency electricity generation system using heat from solar collectors.

In general this is the same as how a huge multiple-megawatt coal plant operates, except on a tiny scale using lower temperatures.

Heat pipe evacuated tube solar collectors are very efficient and extract a large amount of thermal energy from sunlight. They basically don't turn off however so when your thermal storage has reached the rated temperature you need (140F say), the heat pipes continue to collect heat anyway.

Some systems actually suggest using a "heat dump" to blow off the excess collected heat in the summer vs winter operation. It seems more rational to use that excess heat in some manner such as power generation.



Coal power is real simple. You burn coal, make heat, heat water, boil it, keep on heating it until it is "dry superheated steam" and use that to drive a turbine. Then cool the steam and run it through the cycle again.

Problem is, the temperatures are very high, and the turbines are monstrous million-watt critters that no homeowner could ever hope to afford for themselves.

But turbine power generation doesn't have to be huge and the temperatures don't have to be ridiculously high. Small high-effiency turbines can exist.



Turbine power can also be done using "low-temperature boiling point" liquids like alcohol or substances normally called refrigerants since their usual application is in cooling.

Rather than superheating steam, you can superheat other gases with lower boiling points, and achieve high turbine power energy conversion efficiency with lower temperature differentials between "hot" and "cold", and also do this with smaller energy inputs.



Though apparently, this is "uncommon". Probably it's more accurate to say that nobody does this on the small scale, and solar-thermal turbine power technology is mostly undeveloped for the 0.5 kw to 10 kw scale.

The most logical term for what this is, would be a "solar turbine" but that name is already being used as a trademark by a company that makes megawatt-sized turbines for the fossil fuel power plant industry, and they don't have anything smaller that a 1 megawatt turbine.

 
- Dale Mahalko

Disabling vehicle Event Data Recorders

NOTE: This is a discussion of the technology used for event data recorders (EDRs), and is not specific to any vehicle.

Doing any modifications to an EDR may void your product warranty. It may also affect your insurance (higher rates). And it could lead to prosecution if it is found to be vandalized or disabled when "the authorities" want access to it.


Some people in the United States still have this silly notion that citizens are supposed to be free from illegal search or seizure, free from constant governmental monitoring, and free to carry out their lives without some electronic bogeyman constantly spying on them and monitoring their every move, ready to "squeal" at a moment's notice.

Since the exact details of what is or isn't recorded is not required to be specified anywhere, there really is no way to know what all is being recorded with EDR's.

What with in-car integrated cellphone capabilities like OnStar, there really is nothing to prevent vehicle EDR's from also including a digitized audio recording of everything going on inside your vehicle several minutes prior to the crash, so that too can be part of the EDR "crash analysis" information.

So, if you want to put an end to this monitoring of your private activities and damn the consequences, then this is where your search will need to start.


1. Flash Memory

Flash memory cells wear out after thousands of writes. For an Event Data Recorder (EDR) to constantly track your vehicle's status, the information must be constantly updated.

Just updating the vehicle status info once a second (never know when a crash may occur), means that over the course of 10,000 miles at an average of 50 mph, that is 200 hrs of driving, or 720,000 seconds. That right there will damage most any flash memory cells used repeatedly.

However, flash could work if the EDR manufacturer is willing to buy high capacity memory chips and implement wear-leveling. This way although cells will progressively wear out and become unreliable, the damage will be distributed across millions of individual cells over time.

Assume an average of 4096 bytes of event data recorded per second. If 1 gigabyte of flash is available, then it takes 262,144 writes to record data to all cells a single time, in round-robin fashion. For the above 10,000 mile example, all cells would only have been used 3 times with 1 gig of flash storage. If the car were to last up to 300,000 miles, all cells would only have been written 90 times in the vehicle's lifetime.

Increasing the data written to 40 kilobytes per second still only means 900 writes to all cells in 300,000 miles for 1 gigabyte of flash. (Hmm, making a live audio recording of the vehicle cabin doesn't look too difficult to achieve.)

If your vehicle uses flash in its EDR, your only real options are to disable or destroy the memory chips. But the system probably has a way to detect a malfunctioning EDR memory unit since it is an essential part of the recording mechanism.




2. Static RAM

Static RAM is a very low-power memory that can be written an unlimited number of times, and can be powered by a tiny trickle of voltage.

As with flash memory, the system probably has a way to detect a malfunctioning or missing static EDR memory, and will report a "check engine" error code.

If the EDR uses static-RAM, then it most likely contains a small power source to keep data alive, in the event that the main battery is disconnected (like in an accident).


3. Lithium clock/memory batteries

Lithium batteries in home computers have a typical lifespan of about five years before they must be replaced and your computer's clock stops working. Since these batteries need to be replaced periodically, the dealer probably knows where the battery is and how to replace it.

If you were to remove the battery, the EDR would still function, but if the main battery terminals are disconnected, the EDR is instantly erased. Note, removing the battery may show up as a "Check Engine" error code, since that is how dealers would know to replace it.


4. Supercapacitors

An alternate way of retaining data is with a supercapacitor. This is a special high capacity device, which stores energy from the car battery and can be used as an emergency power source for computer memory if power is disconnected.

Supercapacitors effectively have an unlimited lifespan because they recharge almost instantly when power is applied to the device, and power is almost always available in a vehicle with a good battery.

Temporarily clearing the supercap can probably be accomplished by disconnecting the cables to your car battery, and then touching the two power cables together for about a minute. This will discharge any supercaps in the circuit, though it won't do anything if there is a diode in the supercap circuit to prevent draining this way.

The alternate method is to find the supercap and remove it from your vehicle (probably mounted on a circuit board right next to the EDR's memory). The EDR will still function normally with the car battery connected, but data will be instantly lost if the battery cables are disconnected.


5. Dummy / Modified EDR's

This is an advanced hacking project for a digital electronics expert. Basically you have to build a device or circuit which pretends to be an EDR but just discards all data sent to it.

Someone with sufficient knowledge of digital memory could also simply cut off the write signal wire on the memory chip(s) on the EDR circuit board, so that the system tries to send data into it, and nothing happens.


Also, the error monitoring could itself be hacked, so that the EDR cannot report there is a problem to the engine computer. Any request for system status is replied with "Oh yeah everything is fine over here!" while it continues to not store anything.



All of this is difficult to do without detailed knowledge of how the standard EDR or its bus signalling works, and none of this information is going to be available from the vehicle manufacturers.

VMWare Server 2.x and Ubuntu eth0 eth1 eth2 eth3....

Ubuntu can be really annoying when used with VMWare. The main point to note is that if you are transitioning VM's between machines, on the first startup it asks "Did you move or copy this VM?"

If you say you copied the VM, it assignes a new MAC address to the virtual machine. This will break all your previously defined network settings, and leave you with "ghost" interfaces of the old devices that are not used for anything.


To clear these now invalid entries, login with su, and go here:

/etc/udev/rules.d
70-persistent-net.rules

Copy the MAC addresses from eth2 / eth3 into eth0 / eth1 and then delete 2/3. 


If you remove all entires, you old config likely still won't be recognized.


Or just remember to tell VMWare you "moved" the VM, next time.