In Google on May 11, 2012 by rbellew
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Google Streetview cars
parked in front of Gate-One hotel in Bratislava, Slovakia |
| photo: Loskutak |
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Google’s “rogue engineer” is the author of NetStumbler.
What’s NetStumbler? It’s a program that’s been used since the early 2000′s by wardrivers — people who drive around with laptop PCs, a WiFi interface adapter, a GPS receiver, and software to look for wireless access points. (“What is Wardriving and What Can I Do to Prevent It?”) Their software of choice: NetStumbler.
I’ve used NetStumbler many times to survey a client’s site. It turns your laptop into a simplified spectrum analyzer, dedicated just to WiFi channels. It allows me to place a client’s new wireless access point (WAP) on the least occupied channel.
Although I’ve never used its geo-tracking ability, NetStumbler will also record, using input from a GPS receiver, the geographic coordinates of each wireless access point. Apparently Google claims that its managers weren’t aware that its Streetview cars were recording wireless access point data and their coordinates. Google blamed it on a “rogue engineer”.
It turns out that Marius Milner, the author of NetStumbler, is/was a Google employee who developed software for the Streetview project. I’m not sure whose jurisdiction in the US this falls under. In general the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) cares only about radio frequency signals that are transmitted, not who’s receiving them. European authorities are stricter about the reception of radio signals.
I suspect that this issue has a long way to go through investigation before any law enforcement action is taken by any government agency.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Microsoft on May 8, 2012 by rbellew
Microsoft tries a slightly different approach to keeping MS Office, their cash cow, healthy.
In 2007, Microsoft offered a fantastic deal: sign up for Office Live Small Business, register a domain name with them, host your modest website with them, create a blog on their platform, and share Office documents with your colleagues — all for little or nothing. I’ve been hosting my website and email there since 2007. They offered enhancements, including a storefront, for modest monthly fees. The collaboration portion was supposed to sell more copies of Microsoft Office.
I suspect that many Office Live users picked and chose: I used the website and email mailbox hosting services, but used OpenOfffice (cost $0) rather than Microsoft Office (cost $479).
For a couple of years it looked like Microsoft poured major effort into Office Live, but it suffered from lack of focus. About 2009, they began pulling the plug on it: they discontinued the storefront and blogging platform (“Microsoft Spaces”). Then development stopped. In 2010 they announced that they intended to kill Office Live and transition its users to a new product, dubbed Office 365.
I lost track of how many delays followed that announcement. During this time I looked at the transition procedure. I expected to see a simple procedure, but instead found a nightmare of confusing and incorrect documentation. It showed the usual lack of focus, as though people who never worked together or even spoke the same language had thrown together the mess that they called “The Transition Guide”.
I was sure that before the drop-dead deadline of April 30, Microsoft would produce a wizard that would ease the transition. I was wrong. They didn’t. In April I rolled up my sleeves and began transitioning my Office Live data to Office 365, and did the same for about a half-dozen clients.
Office 365 seems to be based upon the Software as a Service (“SAS”) model: you rent Microsoft Office from Microsoft for a monthly fee of $6.00 per user. I’ll continue to use Open Office instead.
I just heard that Microsoft has kept the email portion of Office Live, hosted by Hotmail, alive for one more month. I just tested mine. It is indeed alive.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Business and technology, Computing History on April 22, 2012 by rbellew
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| Jack Tramiel at Commodore 64 25th anniversary, 2007 |
| Photo: Alex Handy |
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The founder of Commodore Computers passed away on April 8.
This seems to be the season when microcomputer pioneers are shuffling off this mortal coil. Jack Tramiel died on April 8, at the age of 83. Until 1984, he was CEO of the manufacturer of the world’s most popular microcomputers. He was a pioneer in producing low-cost microcomputers. Although Jack’s pioneering Commodore PET competed with the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Apple II, he was from an older generation than Messrs Jobs and Wozniak.
Jack was born in Poland in 1928. His parents were killed in the German concentration camps. He survived the concentration camps by working in them. After the war, he emigrated to the U.S., where he enlisted in the Army. At the same time he attended an IBM course where he learned to repair electric typewriters. After leaving the army, in 1953 he started a business in Brooklyn that repaired electric typewriters. He felt “the Japanese” manufacturers nipping at his heels, so he began to repair mechanical calculators. This led him to the manufacture of electronic calculators, digital watches, and eventually to the Commodore PET. He wanted a military name for his company; Admiral and General were taken, so he chose Commodore.
In the mid-1970s, Commodore discovered that their primary calculator chip vendor, Texas Instruments, was competing with them with their own line of electronic calculators. To free Commodore from this competition, Jack resolved to buy his own chip manufacturer.
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| Photographer: Tomislav Medak |
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Jack was not a design guy. He was a resourceful business guy who saw opportunity and seized it. His design guy, his Steve Wozniak, was Chuck Peddle. Chuck was chief engineer and a principal in MOS Technology, a Pennsylvania-based chip manufacturer that Jack’s Commodore acquired at a bargain price in 1976. Chuck designed the low-priced 8-bit 6502 microprocessor that Apple used in the Apple II. (At a time when the similar Motorola 6800 CPU sold for $350, MOS Technology sold the 6502 for $25! No wonder Woz chose it for the Apple II.) Chuck designed the Commodore PET around the 6502, before he and Jack finally split.
I bought a Commodore PET in late 1977, directly from Commodore, before they established a distribution channel. I wrote a little about it on this page. Commodore went on to produce the VIC20 and Commodore 64 personal computers, which were extremely successful and profitable. One reason: back when the PET was being designed, Bill Gates had licensed Commodore to use his Microsoft BASIC, without royalty, on any Commodore product.
In 1984 Jack resigned from Commodore. Apparently he wanted to pursue the home computer market and the board of directors wanted to pursue the business computer market. Eventually Jack bought Atari from Warner. Under his management Atari produced the ST series of home computers.
Jack led a wild life that took him from Poland through Auschwitz, New York, Canada, Pennsylvania, and California. He was a leader in many industries (even low-cost office furniture, in the 1950s) and a key player in the early microcomputing industry. In later years he helped found the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. He was a clever negotiator, resourceful businessman, and pioneer who brought personal computing to the masses.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Computer Graphics, Internet communications on April 18, 2012 by rbellew
Instagram marries instant photography with the telegram.
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg recognizes a good social networking idea when he sees one, so Facebook recently paid a billion dollars to acquire Instagram. iPhone users can upload photos directly to Instagram, and choose to make them publicly available or share them with friends only. Instagram can polish and then distribute your photos to multiple image-sharing sites. It sounds like Facebook without words.
Instagram has helped share ideas across borders because no language translation is necessary. It’s only about 18 months old and has yet to make a profit, so its sale to Facebook represents an excellent ROI by its founders.
I’ve noticed, while watching people browse the web, that some people simply aren’t comfortable with words. They communicate best with images. They’ll love Instagram.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Tech Security on April 17, 2012 by rbellew
Ready.gov will help you prepare for a disaster.
The U.S. federal government has a website, www.ready.gov, that’s aimed at individuals, families, and businesses that wish to prepare for disasters. It’s chock full of good ideas. Your next step is to prepare your computer systems for disasters. My website has pages that will help:
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Entertainment, Technology on April 16, 2012 by rbellew
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| Tennant’s Hamlet, Stewart’s Claudius |
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This production of a 400 year old play fits my 21st Century world.
I just watched the 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which was broadcast in America on PBS two years ago. Its theme of seeming versus being and the difficulty of discerning reality struck a chord: it’s what I do for a living.
I liked this particular production of Hamlet: I think that the text is still 100% original, but the setting is contemporary. To my surprise, this odd mix works. The acting is superb. While watching it, I sympathized with Hamlet’s dilemma: what really did happen? It’s similar to troubleshootiung any broken system. My first question when presented with a broken system is, “What happened”?
The reliability of answers to this question varies from very helpful to completely useless. Regardless, step 2 consists of probing and sniffing the broken system myself. One problem is that my poking at the system may mask what’s actually happening.
David Tennant’s Hamlet is at first equally baffled. His widowed mother Gertrude has married her deceased husband’s brother, Claudius (Patrick Stewart), not long after his father’s death. At least Hamlet receives (he thinks, anyway) a summary from his father’s ghost. I’ve not yet seen such visions.
I was surprised that I liked this television production. Give it a try, especially if traditional Hamlet productions haven’t stirred you. I give it two thumbs up. Others agree: IMDB’s info. We’re lucky to have the complete production available online.
| Hamlet: |
David Tennant |
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| Claudius: |
Patrick Stewart |
audio interview |
| Gertrude: |
Penny Downie |
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© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Entertainment on April 11, 2012 by rbellew
Here’s a terrific Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, available in full on line, thanks to Hulu.
For many years I’ve been a fan of IMDB (Internet Movie Database). Its power from the start was its multiple indexes: you can search for a movie by director, title, character names, actors, etc. Amazon bought IMDB in 1998. Now IMDB provides integration with content streaming services such as Hulu. Hulu is full of TV episodes, including some real gems.
I love the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode from 1956 that’s titled The Derelicts. Robert Newton steals the show from its strong ensemble of actors. All the main characters are severely flawed and Newton’s boozy Dickensian villain, Peter J. Goodfellow, adds a comical dimension. He’s simultaneously charming, pompous, larcenous, and obnoxious. The episode takes a cynical, comical look at a Hitchcock paranoid nightmare that twists and turns until its last moment.
It’s a pity that Mr. Newton died not long after this production when he was only 50, apparently of alcohol-related causes. That may explain why his Peter J. Goodfellow character is so spot-on.
All about Alfred Hitchcock Presents series 1.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Entertainment, Technology on April 4, 2012 by rbellew
Heroic officers and laborers kept Titanic afloat and illuminated as long as possible.
On April 1, PBS telecast Saving The Titanic, an hour-long dramatization / documentary that tells the story behind what happened below decks a hundred years ago as the Titanic was sinking. I loved every minute of it, so I’m happy to discover that PBS has placed the entire hour-long program online for viewing. I’ve watched it twice, because it’s loaded with engineering detail that I missed when it was broadcast.
A good friend of mine who’s a Titanic expert confirms the detail. The 300 foot long “gash” from the iceberg was more like a dent, which stressed the hull’s steel plates and their rivets. The ship would have remained afloat, barely, if the wound had been just a few feet shorter.
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Titanic stern and rudder
Note man standing beneath central propeller |
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As with most disasters, Titanic’s sinking was the result of more than just one event or bad decision: a coal mining labor strike meant that inferior grade coal was stored in her bunkers. Heat from resultant bunker fires degraded the hull’s steel plate temper. If the forward watertight bulkheads were just one deck taller, Titanic would have remained afloat. According to my friend, stopping the engines when the bridge first saw the iceberg was the wrong move; the rudder was aft of the central propeller (of three propellers) and benefited from the propeller’s wash. The ship would have turned faster with the central propeller turning and probably would have avoided the iceberg.
Communication with the bridge ended with the last Slow Ahead command. Below decks crew only knew that the hull had been breached and that their job was to keep the ship afloat and powered up. They did that by re-routing seawater, coal, steam, and electric current for hours until Titanic’s last few minutes. Saving The Titanic tells these heroes’ story.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Entertainment, Internet on April 1, 2012 by rbellew
On the Internet, every day is April Fools day.
I often tell friends, “On the Internet, nothing is necessarily what it claims to be”. April Fools Day allows us to have fun with this fact. Matt McGee today documented Google’s April Fools Day pranks. Within his article I found my favorite: a mock Google Nigeria site.
What online pranks did you find this April 1st?
Previous video April Fool jokes by BBC:
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Apple Computer, Portable computing on March 31, 2012 by rbellew
Simply connecting my cellphone wirelessly to my netbook proved to be much harder than it should be.
Last week I bought my third Samsung SGH-T439 cellphone. It’s a 2007-vintage product: a very small flip-phone. I’m fond of the product, so when I found a great deal on eBay, I pounced. I learned on howardforums.com that Samsung has a program (called PC Studio 3) that allows a Windows PC to exchange files with cellphones such as mine.
Since I was using a Windows XP netbook with a Bluetooth adapter, I thought that I’d try connecting the netbook to the cellphone via Bluetooth. It sounds easy . . . and it could be, except that multiple hardware and software vendors’ products need to communicate nicely and securely with each other.
After failing several times to get this multi-layer system to work, I carefully documented the interface of each layer: function, ports, protocols, passwords, and eventually got it to work. The task required at least an hour . . . and I understand most of the technology and vocabulary! The layperson would have little or no chance of making this setup work.
It’s at times like these that I appreciate the rationale of Apple’s single-vendor approach.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Apple Computer, Portable computing, Telephony on March 29, 2012 by rbellew
I know it’s a lame headline, but I see no pattern to iPhone speech distortion.
Months ago I planned to write an article that documented my observations of speech distortion when conversing with iPhone users. I thought that I saw a pattern: Verizon iPhone subscribers and iPhone 4S users had more speech distortion; AT&T iPhone subscribers and iPhone 3 and earlier users had less speech distortion.
I became interested in the topic because my phone conversations with iPhone users were frequently very low quality. Distortion would obscure syllables, words, or whole sentences.
My testing resources were nil; I would rely upon my very imprecise ear and the patience of my iPhone friends. A funny thing happened on my way to this article: any pattern that I thought that I saw initially, completely fell apart.
Even the simplest analog system can introduce speech distortion caused by a number of anomalies. Modern cellular phone systems add still more variables that can cause speech distortion. One source is multi-path reception: the same radio signal arrives at the receiving antenna after following multiple paths. Each path involves different delays, so the signals are out of phase and interfere with each other.
Test equipment is required at both ends of a telephone conversation to perform most audio distortion tests. One useful test is for intermodulation — the mixing of two tones, resulting in additional tones that weren’t in the original two-tone input signal. The difference in amplitude between the original tones at the test system output and the new tones is measured in decibels (dB). An acceptable difference of signal level to intermodulation (IM) distortion product levels might be -35 dB or more. My ear tells me that cell phone (not just iPhone) IM noise is frequently much, much worse than -35 dB. If I had to guess, IM distortion often is perhaps -10 dB or worse: there’s plenty of audio level; it’s just completely garbled. I’ve not found any real-world iPhone IM distortion test results.
I have one friend with an AT&T iPhone 3 that sounded great one day (no distortion at all), and much worse another day when connected to a different cell tower. Another friend with a Verizon iPhone 4S sounds consistently bad.
One positive result: I found a good mobile phone forum and blog: howardforums.com
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I’m surprised that we accept such abysmal speech quality from our mobile phones. (In the old Ma Bell wired telephone days, Bell Labs devoted enormous resources to minimizing speech distortion. Low speech distortion meant that people talked more via phone, which resulted in more revenue.) I wish that I could document a pattern to iPhone speech distortion, but I can’t. Sorry.
What are your iPhone speech distortion observations?
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Business and technology, Internet communications on March 20, 2012 by rbellew
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| Endless Amusements, or, The Art Of Legerdemain Made Easy To Young Persons (publ 1846. Author: Theodore Abbot, Illustrator: Abel Bowen) |
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Is SEO just WWW sleight of hand?
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been spending many hours recently on SEO (search engine optimization) for clients. Luckily, I believe in my clients and their products and services. However, by analyzing the SEO results of competitors, I’ve become aware that just because a website appears at the top of a Google search results page, means neither that the product nor service is popular, nor even that it’s worthwhile. What it does mean, in competitive search categories, is that the website owner spent time and/or money on marketing. Nothing more.
So if you’re visiting Tulsa, Oklahoma and suddenly need to find a dentist to attend to your toothache, don’t assume when you search for TULSA DENTIST, that the first few search results will be the best dentists in Tulsa. All that it means is that those few dentists at the top worked on their SEO. They simply had a PR budget. They may or may not be good dentists.
Is this what Google and the other search engines intended? I doubt it, but that’s what we’ve got.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Internet security, Web hints and tricks on March 18, 2012 by rbellew
Organize and secure your passwords and account info.
ately I’ve been helping clients improve their SEO (Search engine optimization). A large part of this involves submitting information about each client to numerous directories. Some automated solutions exist, but SEO still involves hundreds of account creations, validations, and data entry. It’s not especially difficult — just tedious . . . and requires creating, storing, and recalling hundreds of account names, email addresses, and passwords.
I’ve been using Keepass to organize all of these clients, directories, account user names, and passwords. I can’t imagine a better tool for the job. Every time that I say, “I wish that Keepass did this“, I discover that in fact that feature is already built-in — I just hadn’t discovered it.
I’ve been adding date of account creation to each account record, as well as notes about that particular account. Since I’m working with multiple clients, I often need to duplicate account info for one client and use the duplicate as a template for a new client. Keepass has all that functionality built-in.
I resisted using Keepass at first, since it had a learning curve, but now it’s my favorite tool, one that I open first thing in the morning and close only at the end of the workday. I use Keepass on multiple computers at multiple sites and store its database in my dropbox (Use Dropbox plus Keepass to store your passwords.)
Visit the Keepass site and download a free copy for yourself.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Apple Computer, Business and technology on February 17, 2012 by rbellew
To keep your job, you may need to compete with near- slave labor.
ecent reports from China paint a gloomy picture for the prospect of manufacturing jobs ever returning to the U.S. They also report that our stuff is being manufactured in less than ideal working conditions.
Charlie Rose conducted a video interview with David Barboza, Shanghai correspondent at The New York Times. He reports that the average Chinese factory worker works at least 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.
Mr. Barboza reports that China has major problems:
- Corruption: huge “shadow” economy
- Labor unrest
- Information access demands
- Banking problems
Mr. Barboza claims that every Chinese worker is enthused by new opportunity and is willing to do whatever is necessary to get ahead.
Let’s visit the factories
Important Note, March 17 2012: NPR’s radio show This American Life yesterday retracted their show in which Mike Daisey reported on his visit to “about ten” (it was actually 3) Chinese factories. The reason? Mr. Daisey had fabricated major portions of his report and outright lied about some events. I’m angry with Mr. Daisey, because his lies destroyed the validity of my article. I comment on this in my March 17 comment to this blog article.
Here is a transcript (PDF) of the retraction by This American Life.
. . . and now the remainder of my February 17 article. Just remember that we can believe nothing that Mr. Daisey reports:
Mike Daisey visited an iPhone factory (owned and run by Foxconn) in Shenzhen and produced a startling audio report on what he found. It aired on NPR’s This American Life in January and includes an interview with a 13 year-old worker. He reports 12-hour workdays and dormitories with workers stacked like cordwood. Judging by his recent blog articles, it sounds like Mr. Daisey had an epiphany. Watch a brief video interview with Mr. Daisey. His views on Steve Jobs are complex.
He confirms Mr. Barboza’s reports of labor problems and adds that the workers are not only oppressed by the factory owners, but also by their government. Looking on the bright side of labor oppression, New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof remarks, “the grimness of factories like Foxconn was better than the grimness of the rice paddies”.
So, until the day that your job is taken by a Chinese worker, enjoy your Chinese-made yuppie toys.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Business and technology, Tech Security on February 16, 2012 by rbellew
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Small server after fire.
telephone sits atop case |
| photo: John from USA |
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Each backup software vendor is treading on the other’s territory as it tries to offer a complete solution.
he small business data backup market is getting crowded. Medium and larger size enterprises have IT staff who look after their data backup requirement. But data for a small business is just as critical, yet they can’t afford IT staff to manage their backup requirements.
IT professionals know that to truly be ready for disaster recovery, system disks, application programs, and data must be restored quickly. For years, one way to quickly recover a system disk was to have a bit-by-bit system disk image (1 in the drawing) on the shelf and restore from that. Application programs may be included on the same disk image.
Once the system disk and application programs (2 in the drawing) have been restored, one only needs to restore data from the latest backup set (3 in the drawing), and everything should play.
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| A Complete Disk Restore |
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For many years, PowerQuest’s Drive Image and Norton Ghost were leaders in disk imaging software. Unfortunately Symantec acquired both products and slowly sucked the life out of them. Acronis filled this vacuum with their Acronis True Image products. If you have a bug-free release, True Image works great, but it’s not a complete solution because the image (1 in the drawing) probably doesn’t include yesterday’s data files.
In the meantime, Carbonite grew out of nowhere in the mid-2000s, with a file-by-file backup program that stored users’ files via the Internet unto Carbonite’s servers (3 in the drawing). I like Carbonite: there’s no hardware to buy or staff to train, and it provides grandfather / father / son versioning back to 3 months, but Carbonite is not a complete solution, because it won’t recover your system disk.
About 18 months ago, Acronis introduced their file-by-file backup system for backing up files over the Internet to Acronis’ servers. I’ve tried it, and prefer Carbonite.
Now Carbonite offers their disk image program, as an extra-cost item. I’ve not tried it. They also, for more money, offer next-day courier delivery of all of your files on an external hard drive.
The small business owner will probably benefit from the competition as Carbonite and Acronis fight it out in the small business marketplace.
Further reading from my website:
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Telephony on February 13, 2012 by rbellew
T-Mobile wins my loyalty.
or some reason, I had chewed through my monthly T-Mobile talk minutes and was within a few minutes of incurring the dreaded extra minutes charges. I could not learn what those charges were on their website, so I called T-Mobile customer support. After 5 minutes of wading through endless voice menus, I went to gethuman (Speak with a human being), where I learned the trick to speak with a human agent.
The agent told me that extra minutes would cost 45 cents per minute. Before I could reply, she added, “I’ll give you 200 free bonus minutes, useable until April 1.”
Now that’s service with a smile!
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In WiFi on February 13, 2012 by rbellew
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| Linksys WRT54GS with reflectors |
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Their form may not be lovely, but they function beautifully.
ast August I wrote about connecting the LANs (Local Area Networks) in two separate buildings with WiFi (Connect buildings with a wireless bridge). Occasional streaming video dropouts across the WiFi link prompted me to improve the WiFi link’s fade margin by increasing the antennas’ forward gains at both ends of this client’s WiFi link.
I followed the Ez-12 Parabolic Reflector plans and fabricated two 6-inch wide parabolic reflectors for use on the twin-antenna Linksys WRT54GS inside the remote building. The SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) of the WiFi link improved by 5 to 10 dB (decibels). Then I added a 7-inch parabolic reflector to the single antenna on the Netopia router inside the main building. The WiFi link’s SNR increased by another 3 to 6 dB.
The reflectors are flimsy (they’re just made of stiff file folders and aluminum foil) and look slightly comical, but they do work!
So, for maybe 50 cents worth of material, the link’s fade margin improved by 8 to 16 dB. (The decibel scale is logarithmic: a 10 dB improvement is equivalent to multiplying the power by a factor of 10.) How could you ask for anything more?
Assembly note: I made the tabs on the support longer than the template indicates, which allowed me to fold them over against the backside of the reflector. Then I used inch-long paper tape strips to stick each folded tab to the reflector’s backside. Otherwise, my reflectors kept falling apart.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Technology on February 11, 2012 by rbellew
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| Russian Ka-7, early 1930s |
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Megalomania in the skies
et us get the context issue out of the way: this article has nothing to do with computers. It does very much concern technology run riot.
In Monstrous Aviation: World’s Biggest Airplanes, Avi Abrams pulls together a fascinating assortment of photographs and drawings of airborne giants, some only imagined, but most real flying machines. (It’s debatable whether the one mile long 70 foot high flight of Howard Hughes’ Hercules Spruce Goose could be called flying.) The article is in three parts.
Most of the images — and numbers (weight, length, lift capacity) — are amazing. Be sure to catch the last part of the article (apparently written two years after the first part). In fact, check out Avi’s other Odd Airplanes.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Google on February 8, 2012 by rbellew
Hey kids, let’s Google again like we did last decade!
ou may have noticed that I’m not happy about recent changes made by Google. Their removal of cached links and addition of Google Instant really bug me.
Scroogle, a Google “scraper” site has appeared. Scroogle helps user privacy by scraping off Google’s cookies, and frequently purging user logs. I like Scroogle because it scrapes off Google’s obnoxious scripts. It also scrapes off Google AdWords ads.
This TechRepublic article fleshes out the Scroogle story.
I much prefer Scroogle’s results page to Google’s. I just wish that it would include the lamented Google cached links. Oh well, nothing’s perfect (though ten years ago Google came pretty close).
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
In Computing History, Technology on January 31, 2012 by rbellew
Edwin Howard Armstrong gave us modern wireless communications.
ast month I mentioned Mr. Armstrong in an article about Edgar Villchur. Edwin Armstrong predated Villchur (he was born in 1890), but they shared a lack of awe for accepted wisdom. Both men, when solving problems, returned to first principles and found unique solutions.
Edwin Armstrong laid the foundation for radio communications. Every radio and television receiver and transmitter today employs his inventions.
Armstrong invented:
- Regeneration A system of greatly increasing the gain of a vacuum tube amplifier by feeding back some of the amplifier’s output to its input.
- Superheterodyne principle An ingenious method of easily amplifying and filtering noise from radio signals by mixing the faint signal with a variable frequency signal to produce a fixed intermediate frequency signal.
- Frequency Modulation (FM)
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Superheterodyne Principle |
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Armstrong came to the notice of David Sarnoff, the megalomaniac chairman of communication technology giant RCA (Radio Corporation of America), who provided a laboratory for him. Armstrong married Sarnoff’s secretary. Eventually the two men became bitter enemies, and fought fierce patent battles in our courts. Armstrong owned fundamental patents for which Sarnoff didn’t want to pay license fees,.
Armstrong won some patent defense lawsuits, only to have them overturned on appeal. Decades of legal costs and marketplace maneuvering by RCA nearly bankrupted him. He jumped to his death on January 31, 1954.
The stories of radio pioneers Armstrong (1890-1954), Sarnoff (1891-1971), and Lee de Forest (1873-1961) were told brilliantly in a 1991 book titled Empire Of The Air. Ken Burns produced a film version for PBS.
Here is a good biographical article about Armstrong by Columbia University, his alma mater. Here’s a good summary.
Armstrong was a giant. 70 and 80 years afterward, we still depend upon his inventions. The irony of his suicide is that he always loved heights: he’d climb tall towers and perform acrobatics atop them. And he never fell from his perches, until January 31, 1954.
© Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695
