Category: Techie

Anything of particular interest to the techie crowd.

Massive monitoring of a Massively Multiplayer Gaming world

(via Schneier on security)
This is just an incredible article.  The author talks about efforts made to monitor the goings on in the virtual World of Warcraft article.

We live in a world where the technology exists that the government or other technically sophisticated group is able to monitor and analyze a substantial fraction of the communications of the world’s population, or can track their movements throughout the day, or keep tabs on their financial transactions.

And that world is called World of Warcraft.

[tags]World of Warcraft, virtual world[/tags]

Neat DNA folding tricks

Here’s what happens when you learn how to manipulate DNA molecules:

ss_060315_dna_tease.300w.jpgA computer scientist has developed a method to weave stringy DNA molecules into nanometer-scale, two-dimensional patterns ranging from smiley faces to a map of the Americas.

Experts say the “DNA origami” procedure laid out by Paul Rothemund of the California Institute of Technology could be adapted to create nano-computers, new drug delivery systems or even molecular-scale chemical factories.

[tags]DNA, folding[/tags]

Make mine with frikkin’ laser beams

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has taken another page from science fiction writer William Gibson’s book by creating a neural implant to enable engineers to remotely manipulate a shark’s brain signals. This would eventually allow them to control the animal’s movements and possibly decode their perceptions.

Remote controlled sharks? Awesome. You know Dr. Evil would want some.

[tags]Sharks, DARPA[/tags]

Bad buckyball! Baaaaad!

It turns out buckyballs might be toxic.  That’s might be toxic, in the same way that oxygen might be necessary to live.

Scientists already realized buckyballs could be toxic. Studies at Duke University in 2004 showed that when buckyballs were introduced to laboratory aquariums they damaged the brains of largemouth bass and may also have prevented certain water-borne bacteria from reproducing.

Until then scientists had theorized that the strong attraction that buckyballs have for each other would cause the molecules to clump together and safely sink to the bottom of any body of water, be it a test aquarium or a lake.

. . .

The buckyballs break apart vital hydrogen bonds within the DNA molecule’s double helix and they can stick to grooves on DNA’s surface, causing the molecule to bend. Not only do the buckyballs damage the DNA, Cummings says, they cripple its ability to heal.

“The buckyballs insert themselves in a way that prevents the DNA from self-repairing,” Cummings told LiveScience. The buckyball actually forces a piece of nucleotide from one of the DNA’s double helixes and takes its place, preventing the strands from reuniting.

Ouch.  That sounds bad.  And I’m sure someone will bring up Michael Crichton’s novel Prey, but this isn’t quite the same thing. That book was about nano-particle entities that were bad as a cooperating system, while this article is about a specific nano-particle that happens to be very bad all on it’s own.

[tags]Buckyballs, nano-particles[/tags]

How to read color coded resistors

My father was an electrical engineer.  This is the kind of stuff he knew.  I remember once learning this, but it was probably 20 years ago, so I’ve forgotten how.  Guess I should use the information to bone up on my knowledge I don’t actually use for anything. (via MAKE blog)

Resistors are coded with colored bands in its shell, usually four colors but sometimes you can find five. Each color represent numbers which you can decode to get the exact value. The first three colors are the resistance values and the fourth color represents the tolerance.

[tags]MAKE, resistors, DIY electronics[/tags]

The TCP/IP guide

Sure, 1648 pages is a heck of a lot of reading, but I suspect “The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference” will be considered the new must have networking book.  Not that I’d give away my Douglas E. Comer or W. Richard Stevens networking books (The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 is still great), but I’d like to have this alongside those.  And O’Reilly books are always great.
[tags]TCP/IP, O’Reilly books[/tags]

MAKE blog link dump

So many interesting projects that I can’t write up an article for all of them. Check these out for some pretty neat projects.

Now that’s a lot of reading for you to catch up on.  And me, too.  I’m so far behind on my techie/geek reading.

[tags]MAKEzine, MAKEblog, MAKE, link dump[/tags]

Build your own lightbulb

DIY light bulb

Building your own lightbulb this way is not economically feasible (the author estimates $50 to do one bulb), but it’s just so dang cool.  I may seriously have to try this out myself and then do it with my kids.  I think they have enough of my geek genes to appreciate the cool geekiness of this project.  And I’ve learned about how lightbulbs work just reading about how to build one.

It’s a whole lot easier to just displace the air with an inert gas that’s at the same pressure as the surrounding air, which is how most modern bulbs work. Common household lightbulbs use a mixture of argon and nitrogen. Fancy krypton flashlights and xenon headlamps use those eponymous heavier noble gases to allow the filament to burn longer and hotter.

So you don’t even need a good vacuum pump – just a reliable way to get inert gas into the bulb.  The article even covers that (he used helium).

[tags]Light, DIY[/tags]

Black hole flight simulator

This is so unrelated to anything of interest to most people, I’m not sure I should even post it.  But hey, this is my bandwidth, and I get to put what I want.  So, up goes the story of the black hole flight simulator (New York times web site – registration required).

The “Black Hole Flight Simulator” was created by Andrew Hamilton, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The 23-minute show contains segments that required 90 hours of supercomputer calculation for each on-screen second. You can see the trailer here (and look out for the guy in the canoe).

Wow!  A 23 minute show that required 90 hours of computation for each second displayed?  Let’s see, that’s 23 minutes times 60 second per minute times 90 hours per second showed.  Work that out, and you get something like, ummmm, a whole buncha-lotta-wowza time required to build that (actually, I think it comes to about 16.5 years of computing time required to build the video).

I’m going to have to watch that video when I get some time to sit and watch it all.  Sounds fascinating.  Now, when will they make a game out of this?

[tags]Black hole, Flight simulator, event horizon[/tags]

Repair your laptop display on your own

I’ve never needed to do this to a laptop, but I’ve done it to a cell phone.  The process is pretty much the same, you’re just working with more expensive parts.   🙂

The worst thing that can happen to a portable computer owner – aside from having his wife or girlfriend leave him or his hard disk go up in smoke – is irreparable damage to its built-in, but relatively sensitive liquid crystal (LCD) display. (No, I’m not putting women on the same pedestal as hard disks, what are you thinking?) This might happen because of an entirely innocuous-seeming mishap, such as leaving a pencil lying on the notebook’s keyboard and failing to remove it before closing the clamshell. A firm slap on the top deck to force the unit closed and presto you’ve got a serious problem with your LCD! Another common misadventure involves cracking the screen when you or a colleague trip over a portable’s power or network cables, hurling the computer to the floor with a sickening crunch. Ouch!

[tags]LCD, laptop, DIY repair[/tags]

Six versions of Windows Vista announced

This is all over the techie world, so no specific reference here.  Microsoft announced six versions of Windows Vista yesterday.  Full details available at Microsoft.

  • Windows Vista Business
  • Windows Vista Enterprise
  • Windows Vista Home Basic
  • Windows Vista Home Premium
  • Windows Vista Ultimate
  • Windows Vista Starter

Business, Enterprise, and Premium will support the new Aero user interface.  The Windows Vista Starter version will be offered in emerging markets.  This specifically means Microsoft is working to provide a lower cost version of Windows in areas with entry level computing equipment and generally lower technology availability.

[tags]Microsoft, Windows Vista[/tags]

 

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