Category Archives: Geek Stuff

Geek Stuff, General

Column from PC Magazine: Pathetic European Attack on Google and the Net

Column from PC Magazine: Pathetic European Attack on Google and the Net

In a headline-grabbing comment last week, Pinto Balsemão, head of the European Publishers Council, said that the Internet cannot continue to be free, as it has been for the last decade. He wasn’t suggesting that publishers make all their sites pay-per-view, but that search engines could not and should not be able to search for content freely.

There is some concern that Google, and other search engines, can run rampant through a publishers library and start providing copyrighted works to the public, for free or a fee.

If this is a real concern, I can think of several ways to stop this.

  • Get off the internet.
  • Block the bots. I know what bots are visiting my web pages. I could set filters to stop them from accessing pages. Then they wouldn’t be collected, stored, mined, and indexed on the main site.
  • Get W3C to add a tag that tells bots that this page should not be indexed. Maybe even set the tag to allow some bots and forbid others, so internal search engines can provide a catalog for the Intranet. (Note: Intranet vs. internet)
  • Whitelist allowed users. Only allow valid, authorized IP adresses to access the web sites. In a closed community, this is a lot more manageable than a site that wants to be available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

There are so many controls that a user can provide to limit access to files and pages on the internet. Folks seem to have forgotten them, or never understood how the system worked; just following the lead of what was done before, by a bunch of hackers who didn’t really want to restrict access to information, copyrighted or not.

Of course, it will require a lot more work to manage everything. An expenditure of time, money, and effort to limit access to a system that is a free-for-all in its natural state. But, it can be done.

Can I patent these ideas?

Geek Stuff

An Important Equation

Elevation = sin-1(sin(lat)*sin(dec)+cos(lat)*cos(dec)*cos(15*hour))

where:
lat = latitude on earth
dec = declination of sun
hour = delta hour from noon (i.e. noon =0)

What’s that spell?

Elevation of the sun above the horizon!!!

So at 10 AM on June 21st at my house, the sun would be:
sin-1(sin(39)*sin(23.5)+cos(39)*cos(23.5)*cos(15*2))
= sin-1(.629*.399+.777*.917*.866) = sin-1(.868) = 60.2 degrees above the horizon
Wow!

Geek Stuff

Column from PC Magazine: Whitacre: Threat or Menace? You Tell Me

Column from PC Magazine: Whitacre: Threat or Menace? You Tell Me

The Triple Play option I have heard about in the Telecom world refers to Voice, Video and Data, not Voice, internet, and mobile referred to in the original article.

Cable companies are trying to add Voice and Data to their existing video cable systems. Telcos are trying to add Data and Video to their existing wirelines. All to get into the customers home.

Some arguments can be made that Mobile phone systems may carry all three to wireless terminations, but we will need to see how well that will work given the general bandwidth restrictions on cell systems.

The SBC CEO is saying that SBC owns the telco pipes that carry all this information and that they can tariff the content providers so they can get a cut of the pie. This can be in reference to Voice bypass service providers such as Vonage or Skype or Video providers such as whoever is streaming video over the internet. Both of these potential competitors are using the internet to provide their services to the end customer, who is requesting these services. And there is the rub.
Continue reading Column from PC Magazine: Whitacre: Threat or Menace? You Tell Me →

Geek Stuff, General, Politics

Blog Attack on Steele Decried

Blog Attack on Steele Decried

A part of this article grabbed my attention:

Other liberal bloggers defended Gilliard and took after Kaine for pulling his ad. Markos Moulitsas, editor of the blog Daily Kos, said that advertisers should expect edgy content and that Kaine’s actions could threaten their editorial independence.

“I don’t want bloggers to be afraid to say things because they don’t want to offend an advertisers,” Moulitsas said.

If bloggers accept advertisers then their content should always be suspect. Not only for what they don’t say to avoid offending their financial base but, also, for what they do say to impress their financial base.

Will the fierce, independent blogger moderate their comments to keep their audience sending them money? who knows? Who cares? It is just appearances.

Geek Stuff, Photography

Why the full size (35mm) solid-state imaging sensor will be a pipe dream.

Erwins Home

I found this site while looking for info on 35mm sized sensors. (See the post below). I don’t know if I agree with his argument. The SLR lenses if have for my camera are designed to project an in-focus image onto the film plane of my camera, whether analog or digital. if the silver halide crystals or digital pixels capture that information with the desired detail then I have captured my image.

I know that analog film can capture a much denser amount of light than a digital sensor. The example used inthe article is that a 35mm neagtive is equivalent to 22Mpixels, which is equivalent to 25.5K P/sq mm.

Hmm. That’s pretty close to the 20D and XT densities. Of course those chips have much less area than a 35 mm frame.

I found it an interesting article to read. Beware of people who warn of pipe dreams.

Geek Stuff, General, Photography

Canon EOS 5D Hands-on Preview: Digital Photography Review

Canon EOS 5D Hands-on Preview: Digital Photography Review

Oh, they are making this so difficult for me. I really want to upgrade to a digital SLR. I already have a Canon EOS film camera with lenses, so I want to get a Canon D-SLR. They are generally reviewed as the best ones out there. Nikon can match some Picture Quality measures, but when you have the excellent lenses that both companies produce, that should be expected.

So, I started by looking at the Canon 10D which has been replaced by the 20D, with even better features. The 20D runs about $1500.

The Canon Rebel XT is running less than $1000. It has a lot of the features of the 20D, but, it has a plastic case. I am leery of plastic cases since I know how rough I can be on cameras while scrambling around looking for the perfect shot.

The one problem with the 20D and the XT is that their sensors are smaller than a 35mm film frame. This means that the sensor will only capture the inner two-thirds of the image seen in the view finder. The outer portions of the image, when the shutter opens, won’t be on the sensor and won’t be captured. I am sure that is something I can adjust to and, with the lenses I have, I can compensate to ensure that the portion of the image I want will be in the area that the sensor will capture. But, it is a waste.

The 5D has an image sensor that is the same size as a 35mm frame, so that 1.6 FOV (field of view) crop isn’t a factor. This is what I want. Unfortunately, the 5D runs about $3300

What to do? what to do? Starting with the 20D, costing $500-$600 more than the XT, seems like a bad starting move, especially if I want to go to the 5D as soon as possible.

Christmas is coming soon, I have to decide.

The 20D and XT have 8.2 and 8.0 M pixel chips, respectively, and the 5D has a 12.8 M Pixel chip. (Although I haven’t really seen anything on the effect of pixel density on the quality since:

the 5D has 14.8K Pixels/sq mm
the 20D has 24K Pixels/sq mm
the XT has 24K Pixels/sq mm

which implies, to me, that the 5D will be more lossy and lesser quality than the other two, especially if you were blowing up the middle of the image.) But I don’t know how many Pixels/sq mm are considered good enough to blow up a digital image into a wall poster, or 16×11 print. Maybe I should start with the XT and wait until the 5D gets its P/sq mm number up to the 25K range.

I just checked the ultimate, top of the line, Canon EOS, the 1Ds Mark II, and see that its P/sq mm number is 19.2K. The 1Ds is a 16Mpixel camera, with a 35mm equivalent sensor, in the $8K range. It is for the pros.

So maybe 24K P/sq mm is overkill, or maybe the 1Ds is obsolete. It’s over a year old now.

Geek Stuff

Lessons Learned

I think I am in the process of learning a lesson with Web Gallery. Rather than putting the entire trip into one gallery, I should have divided it up into St Andrews-tourist, St Andrews-Golf, London, Worldcon, and Scotland-non-Worldcon. The time it takes to update the entire Gallery when I make changes to just a bit is very long. I think it is examining every single page whether it has new content or not.

I think the next lesson I learn will be that I can’t split an existing gallery in 5-6 smaller ones. I will look into that when the latest changes have finished publishing.