Category: technology

not all bugs are bad

history technology

Bill Joy wrote allot of software. Allot of what he wrote in the 70s is still in use. Of course not bit by bit. Not even much of his original source code might be left. But -whether you know it or not- BSD Unix, nfs and vi make your life better. Every day. Before his generation computer code was entered via punch cards. Access was very limited. Even on the terminals that Bill used people had to account for the time they used. But:


So the computers of the time at Michigan, you were charged like $3 an hour. It was
interactive, which was cool. It wasn’t just punch cards, but you were charged like $3 an
hour to be on, and you were charged for CPU time, disk IO’s. Every little thing the
computer did, it would keep counts and charge you. So the Anthropology Department
had an account with several thousand dollars so we could get some reasonable computer
time. And we figured out how to get free time very quickly. There was a bug in the
system where you could tell it when you logged in, you’d say you wanted time, and time
equals seven seconds, or time equals five minutes, some limit. You’d sign up for a block
of time. You’d say T equals K, which was not a number, but that would give you free
time, and then we had as much time as we wanted until they plugged that loophole, which
took several years.

from Andreas Bechtolsheim & William Joy, 1999

I am sure that they would have found a different way to get the time they needed. Sometimes
gaming the system is a good thing. But certainly not as often as people think. The spirit of Enron is still out there.

nice read

history technology

Stephen Pigeon posted an interesting blog entry about the history of knowledge in math. The Internet CAN be a nice and inspiring place.

vodafone websessions and OS X

internet technology

In order to operate the ZTE K3565-Z under OS X 10.5 or 10.6 you need to set the
network preference settings yourself. The Software defaults are wrong and will not work.
Vodafone phone support refers to debitel for this product. Debitel charges $1.55 a minute for support.
The bigger problem is that they don’t support OS X. They just say that they don’t know anything about it.

In the end things got working with these settings collected from the Internet and applied with a bit of luck:

When you insert the USB stick you get a volume with

Vodafone MC Installer

I ran this. I think it is needed. Also since its distinct crappyness will give you a taste of things to come. After you installed this the volume will no longer be mounted when the stick is being inserted.

Under 10.6 I got lots of messages about extensions not being working / being compatible. Both after the install and after the reboot this POS installer felt it needed.


Vodafone Mobile Connect.

should launch after the install. It fails the first time under OS X 10.6, complaining that it can not find a the stick. Just start it again.

The Vodafone Mobile Connect junk-app is good for one thing only: it lets you enter the PIN of the stick. The “Activate” / “Aktivieren” button is actually plain evil:
it will overwrite the network preference settings for the K3565-Z with non working defaults. Don’t click it.

Since we are talking crapware here the Network control panels gets populated with three devices for the ZTE stick. You can ignore / remove the ones ending in ATPort and DiagPort.
One should read “Vodafo…565-Z”. The number is *99***1#. That’s ok.

In order to make the ‘Connect’ / ‘Verbinden’ button sing for you have to change settings under ‘Advanced …’ / ‘Weitere Optionen …’.
In the Modem tab choose for the

‘vendor’ / ‘Hersteller’ the setting ‘Generic’ / ‘Allgemein’

then for the

model pick “GPRS (GSM/3) ”

for the

APN: event.vodafone.de

just like your Grandma always told you. Make sure to hit “Apply” / “Aendern” before you try to connect. If you “activate” the card with the mobile connect crapware then your settings will be overwritten.

trucks, cars, kitchens and microwaves,

Apple history technology

Steve Jobs said at this years D8 conference:


When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because
that’s what you needed on the farms.” Cars became more popular
s cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic
transmission became popular.

“PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs said.
“They are still going to be around.” However, he said,
only “one out of x people will need them.”

I agree on the part that iPad like devices will liberate
people from using computers that didn’t want them in
the first place. And there are more than we think.
I think Apple will make a killing by recognizing this with
the iPad.

I like the historical analogy. However I find this one
to be more fitting: Computers are like kitchens, and
iPads are like micro wave ovens. A microwave will
work against your hunger. You are dependent on
pre made things that you have to purchase at a price.
It is easy, but you have not much chance to control
the experience.

A kitchen is more complex to operate than a microwave.
But the food tastes better. It is healthier and cheaper.
And the varieties of experiences is endless.

IR controler on ATV update

Apple technology

An Apple TV box stopped reacting to the IR when being back in the Apple interface. The light was still changing colors when a button was pressed, but nothing happened. This forum post describes perfectly shows how to get the IR working again. Since it would be a shame if these clear and wonderful instructions would fall prey to data rot here a (slightly amended) copy of them:

1) if you have not already, patchstick the ATV

2) ssh to the atv

(Steps 3 and 4 will fail if you have set the ATV to not auto update its software, since mesu.apple.com will resolve to 127.0.0.1)
3) download the IR firmware update utility: wget http://mesu.apple.com/data/IR/061-3045.20080708.Aq12D/IRReceiverUpdaterTool2

4) download the firmware image: wget http://mesu.apple.com/data/IR/694-5586.20081119.2AvT3/irrxfw-0x0312.irrxfw

(you probably will need to do chmod +x IRReceiverUpdaterTool2)
5) run the firmware patch: ./IRReceiverUpdaterTool2 irrxfw-0x0312.irrxfw

6) if the process worked you should see this message near the end of the output:

Flash Image Verification Succeeded…
SendCmdExitBootLoader
Bootload Success…

At his point the IR indicator blinks yellow. The Apple UI is reacting again. With
an ATV software Version 3.0.2 on a Geforce Go 7300 1GHz ATV the IR became
inoperable after a reboot.

Redoing the update, then unpairing the remote and pairing it again fixed this.

On a side note: I found this blog post 20 minutes after I made it when googling for ‘IRReceiverUpdaterTool2’.

Google is simply amazing.

apple and flash

Apple technology

Apple published a “Thoughts on Flash”. The piece is amazingly well crafted and written. The real reason for Apples bold move attempting to keep flash out of the mobile space only shines through. If Flash would become the engine for mobile, then applications could run on Apple and other devices. A mobile software eco system would grow outside of the Apple space.

Apple realizes the potential of preventing this. Out of the box the iPad can NOT do any of the following:

= perform as a calculator
= perform as an alarm clock
= read PDFs

Yes, I am sure, ‘there is an app for that’. Which is the model of the device. And in order to create software for this you have to adhere to Apples programming standards (objective C) and use their distribution channels. They are in control. Letting flash grow in this space would not allow them to control this.

For Apple this makes perfect sense. And it is amazing that they had vision that they would be able to dethrone a system that always could claim greater than ninety percent proliferation.

avalanche on mars

technology

Some rocks fall down on the north pole of Mars, and we have a picture of it.

Nature happens even if nobody watches. Doing it for the first time is sometimes all it takes to make me re-realize that.

glowing rectangle

daily life history technology

Are we in trouble when the Onion has a point?

looking up memory chips

linux technology

If a machine sports edac then


find /sys/devices/system/edac/ \( -name mem_type -o -name size_mb -o -name mc_name \) -exec cat {} \;

will display quickly what kind of memory modules are visible to the kernel, and in which state they are in.

Time before the movie starts

media technology

This page compares the user experience of a legit DVD with that of a pirated movie. I would add to this to get the packaging open: There are often the shrink wrap + 3 ugly white stickers on each open side saying “Security Device enclosed”.

I remember that early DVDs would start into the movie right away. and then, when done would go to the menu. When you insert a DVD you do it, since you want to see the movie. Not because you want to watch all the other crud, like a menu opening that contains key elements of the movie to come, often oddly animated.

The problem with this is, that probably not enough people care. They don’t care about spam, viruses on their computer, their diet either. In turn the quality of the offerings for ‘the general public’ get worse. To the point that they are plain junk in some cases. I read that ’30 rock’ would be a good show. When I watched some of the first season the other day I was a bit shocked how little I was able to enjoy it. Probably a unique aversion since I don’t watch TV. So my tolerance for mental junk might be a bit different compared to people who spend hours in front of the TV screen.