As you may have noticed, I’ve been rather quiet over the past several months. That is because I’ve been spending the vast majority of my time on a somewhat unique project. I haven’t mentioned this project much on the public internet because I didn’t want to start the project with extremely high expectations and then never post about the work being done. However, after starting this project at the end of May 2010 my friends and I have come a long way. My goals are in sight and progress is being made every day.

Rest assured that there will be write-ups and many photos from throughout the process. And yes, I am being very vague.

For now I’ll leave you with the above  image. My friends already know what is going on, and I will reveal details on the internet once the project is “Live.”

For my setup I am using software RAID/LVM and not the built in RAID abilities of the card. If you want to use the card instead, it will map the entire array to a single “hard drive” in linux, such as a 4TB RAID 5 array mapped only to /dev/sdb

This is the highpoint website for the series of cards: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr2600.htm

Follow these commands:

$ mkdir highpoint-raid-stuff    #You can call the folder whatever you like
$ cd highpoint-raid-stuff/
$ wget http://www.support-highpoint-tech.com/Main/rr26xx/268x/Linux/opensrc/rr268x-linux-src-v1.4-091124-1558.tar.gz tar xzf rr268x-linux-src-v1.4-091124-1558.tar.gz
$ cd rr268x-linux-src-v1.4/product/rr2680/linux/
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo modprobe rr2680

Next, create a file called rr2680.sh in the /etc/init.d folder

Edit the file so that it contains the following text, then save it.

#!/bin/sh
modprobe rr2680
exit 0

Then run the following command:

$ sudo ln rr2680.sh /etc/rc3.d/rr2680.sh

After that, the server should automatically load the new driver each time it boots and you should be able to access all of the drives connected to it. I hope this helped!

I got a new tablet computer / netbook last week for taking notes in class. I really like this tablet, but it has a few quirks that really need to be ironed out. I’ll get to the complaints in a moment.

The first thing I noticed about this computer once it arrived is that it is very small and very light. It has an 8.9 inch LED backlit display and weighs around 2lbs; it is very portable. It only has 32GB of hard drive space, of which the operating system accounts for nearly half. Asus makes up for the small drive by having TWO SD card slots, which is wonderful. One of the slots is protected by a semi-permanent cover and is labelled “Expansion Slot” while the other slot is the more traditional front facing open access design. Both slots are spring loaded.

They key asset that this netbook leverages is that its screen rotates and flips down to convert the computer into a tablet. Sadly the T91MT does not have a accelerometer to determine the screen orientation automatically. Instead one must either press and hold the button next to the power switch or use ctrl + an arrow key to select the screen orientation. The button stopped functioning for me as I was removing the bloatware that came with the system, and even after reinstalling all of the Asus software it still does not function. I have also not found out how to rehotkey the rotate button.

The single largest problem I have with this netbook is how slow it is. It only comes with 1GB of RAM and uses the slower 1.33GHz Atom single core processor. I really would have appreciated the 1.6GHz chip and slightly better graphics, but I knew about all of this when I got it. It preforms adequately for taking notes, although it does struggle when I am drawing graphs during math class while recording audio of the lecture. You can’t really play games on this computer, although I did manage to tweak Warcraft III to run at around 10FPS on DoTA, which is better than some other old computers. Web sites with heavy flash usage are almost unusable, including Youtube. The videos play, but there is a lot of stuttering. I’m also not sure why Asus included the webcam as no software I have is able to stream and receive video calls (including Gtalk or several SIP programs). The camera stutters so badly that it causes the audio to ripple and lag as well, making it completely unusable.

I’ve loaded Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 to one of the SD cards and found out that the touch screen doesn’t work out of the box. I haven’t done too much work to try and get it working, but I thought I would let you know.

The power supply is also really small and very easy to carry around. The netbook runs on 12v and 3A with a 10% tolerance, so this is theoretically capable of running directly off of a lead acid battery. While it is also technically capeable of being wired directly into a cars electrical system I would recommend getting a car adapter of some sort in order to clean up the power from the car.

I’ve paired this tablet with my Android G1 in order to tether my internet access for use on the go. It works extremely well. I would recommend making a shortcut on your desktop for the bluetooth profile so that it becomes easier to connect the two paired devices. It takes a few seconds for Windows to setup the connection, but once established you get the full 1mbs connection that bluetooth can provide. In a 3G zone I consistently get 800kbs downloads and 130kbs uploads.

The battery life is nice, clocking in at around four to four and a half hours for my usage (1/2 screen brightness, high performance mode). The T91MT can be found online for around $480, so you pay a good deal extra for the benefit of the touch screen. I think that the next generation of this product should iron out most of the issues I have with this model. Overall I really like this little computer, in spite of its limitations.

It’s way better than an iPad and cheaper too

The force with the best machines has a strong tactical advantage. Robots have a much lower cost of operation than their human counterparts and require no sleep, food, or safety equipment. If a machine is destroyed, another can be instantly deployed to take its place. Humans simply cannot compete against those types of abilities. Any combat engagement between the cold steel of machines and the flesh and blood of humans would result in the slaughter of all the organic combatants involved.

Machines have no conscience to evaluate their actions; A gun does not know the difference between a 5 year old child and a hardened soldier, only a human operator does. The only way for those on the receiving end of robotic warfare to retaliate is to turn to terrorism. If one has no chance of defeating the opponent on the battlefield then one is forced to strike at the civilian population instead. If, however, both forces have access to robotic technologies, war on a traditional battlefield will become pointless, as neither side will suffer human losses, defeating whatever meaning that could be found in war.

In order to use the wireless internet you have to get the settings from their website. Good job guys.

Much like humanity as a whole, the man in the story ignored countless warning signs. “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.” The man was completely aware that he should not have continued into the extreme cold of the Yukon, and yet he was so secure in his abilities that he pressed forward. Similarly, humans release enormous amounts of toxic gases into the atmosphere, even though we are fully aware of how damaging they are to life. We know better than to breathe in the gases our chemical plants release, and yet we don’t seem to grasp the fact that those gases have no way to leave the planet. Eventually, perhaps sooner rather than latter, they will come right back to harm us.

“It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death…Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.”(London) Even though he continued to struggle for the chance of surviving the ordeal, from that point on he knew that he was as good as dead. He had enough intelligence to realize how hopeless his situation was. Shortly after this he accepts the cold reality of the situation and determines that “he might as well take it decently.” While humanity may not have reached such a tipping point yet, many do not realize how close we are to an irreversible decline, like the man’s death, we may actually be. If enough of the polar ice caps melt, the amount of sunlight (and heat) reflected back into space will diminish to the point where the poles will no longer be able to refreeze, and the world climate will change even more drastically (Revkin). This is in addition to the more well known concept of rising sea levels causing entire cities to be flooded, including New York and London (Revkin). From that point on there would be nothing we could do to repair the damage in any measurable amount of time

Mankind continuously “tests the ice” of the world by adding more destructive abilities to what we already do. Man builds a single coal power plant, testing an area of ice. Because there was no immediate change in the area as an effect of the new power plant, humans build hundreds more. Mankind might hear a metaphoric crackle in the ice, but continues building yet more toxic machines, such as automobiles. It might not be until our entire civilization has fallen through the thin layer of ice that we realize that we probably shouldn’t have been so reckless, and that all of those pesky environmentalists were actually right all along. “You were right, old hoss; you were right”(London). Even with all of the abuse the Earth has taken because of us, it will take no notice of our departure.

Jack London’s century old story warned the world about the dangers of trusting knowledge over wisdom Since then, few improvements have been made in how humanity treats the planet, in fact, the situation as become even more dire. Nature has warned us countless times to discontinue our destructive ways, all to no avail. The global community attempted to set the gears in motion to attempt to alter our amount of destruction with the Kyoto Protocol, but it has the same effect as the man building his fire under the snow covered tree. An attempt at survival was made, but it was not sufficient. Humanity now has far more wisdom than the lone man in the Yukon, but only time will tell if we posses more wisdom than he had.

Works Cited
London, Jack. To Build a Fire. 1908. Wikisource. 6 Sept. 2006. 2 Feb. 2009 .
Revkin, Andrew. “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts.” New York Times 2 Oct. 2009. Feb 2009
Merriman, C. D. “Jack London – Biography and Works.” The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. Jalic Inc. 10 Feb. 2009 .

The War on Terror was necessary. If the USA had not acted with force after the September 11th attack, it is logical to assume that there would have been more terrorist attacks attempted on American soil. Robert Kagan expressed the theory that if the United States had not acted to remove Saddam Hussein from power he would have grown more powerful and would have launched a larger scale assault against the United States. The world is certainly more secure now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. He would not have been removed from power had it not been for the War on Terror. Kagan also thinks that although management mistakes have been made by the Bush administration, the War on Terror can be considered successful.

That being said, the financial cost of the War on Terror has been enormous. Veronique de Rugy estimates that the war has already cost upwards of one trillion dollars. He stated that “(one trillion dollars is) 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all.” Although the money was needed to pay for the military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to reduce the amount we spend on the war in the future. This amount of expense is unsustainable and could ultimately prove to be much more of a problem than most people realize (Rugy). However, money is not the only thing American citizens have been giving up in order to further the war on terror

Joyce Slaton warned in November of 2001 that the Patriot Act grants the government far to much power. She was especially concerned with the ease at which the personal privacy of citizens could now be infringed upon. The Act grants the executive branch the ability to, with easy to obtain approval, track and view anyone’s online activity (Slaton). This monitoring is, according to Slaton, trivial to bypass using simple encryption, code words, and/or other obfuscation techniques. Any terrorist with the slightest desire to not be caught would use these techniques, leaving regular citizens with little benefit for their loss of online privacy. In addition to the privacy issue, monitoring vast amounts of internet traffic is expensive and requires large amounts of resources (Slaton). Because of the high cost and low effectiveness rate, the monitoring of internet activity should be be limited to already suspected terrorists only, and not include the general population as is currently the case.

Americans, Slaton claimed, have given up their privacy rights in order to be better protected from terrorists. This could possibly have been a good idea when the Patriot Act was introduced, but the American people need to reclaim the rights that they deserve. It is easy to see how being able to spy on someone who is planing to bomb a subway station would be beneficial to society and save lives. The problem arises when telecommunication providers look at everyone’s communications, not just suspected terrorists, on the off-chance that one of them turns out to be a terrorist. Slaton made the accurate assessment that it is counter productive to give up the rights that your country is going to war to protect.

The lack of privacy is not the only concern that faces many American citizens. American emergency systems are not prepared to deal with a terrorist attack of any magnitude. According to Arthur Kellerman, funding needed to maintain an adequate state of readiness in hospitals is being diverted to other areas of government. With the current medical system, hospitals are barely able to maintain their day-to-day operations, let alone a large scale emergency (Kellerman). Hospitals must be able to have surplus capacity in order to be an effective tool for assisting with a recovery after an attack. If hospitals are not able to cope with a large scale emergency or attack there will be many needless casualties that could have been avoided.

In addition to hospitals necessitating a larger operating capacity, ambulance technicians need to be trained in how to respond to common types of terrorist attacks, including bombings (Kellerman). The London subway bombings are a prime example of what emergency personnel need to be able to respond to.

Daniel Hamilton and Tara O’Toole used the Atlantic Storm project to demonstrate how woefully unprepared the current emergency system is for dealing with a bioterrorist attack. Atlantic Storm was a war-game that was designed to demonstrate the importance of how nations from all over the world would need to work together if there were ever to be a new pandemic virus, such as a bio-weapon (Hamilton and O’Toole). While a bioterrorist attack may be impossible to prevent, it is possible to reduce the effectiveness of an attack to very low levels (Hamilton and O’Toole). They stated that “The first step (to improve emergency preparedness) is to recognize that this (bioterrorist) threat requires something more holistic than buying more vaccine or training more doctors.” This means that hospitals cannot simply buy medicines that negate the damage done by an attack. Instead, the world as a whole must be ready to pool resources and work together to quickly develop and deploy vaccines in sufficient quantities to eradicate the contagion (Hamilton and O’Toole).

Because the War on Terror has so far been relatively successful with it’s goal of reducing the threat of terrorism, it is time to refocus our resources. While a military presence is still required in other countries, it is now time to begin strengthening the United States itself. As Hamilton and O’Toole have explained, our emergency response systems, specifically our ability to combat bioterrorist attacks, are not currently in a suitable condition to face an attack successfully. Funding for our hospitals needs to be increased dramatically in order to allow them to properly deal with the many threats that the military alone cannot combat. Although the War on Terror is fulfilling it’s objectives, the price in privacy and domestic emergency preparedness has been high. Now that the threat of a terrorist attack in the US is lower, it is time to refocus our objectives and to improve anti-terror preparedness domestically, in addition to other countries.

Works Cited:

Hamilton, Daniel, and Tara O’Toole. “Facing up to the bioterror threat.” International Herald Tribune. 31 Jan. 2005. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/30/opinion/edotoole.php?page=1

Kagan, Robert. “Whether This War Was Worth It.” Washingtonpost.com. 19 June 2005. The Washington Post. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2005/06/17/AR2005061701217.html

Kellerman, Arthur. “Still Not Ready in The ER.” Washingtonpost.com. 5 Aug. 2005. The Washington Post. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401826.html

Rugy, Veronique. “The Trillion-Dollar War.” Reason Online. May 2008. Reason Magazine. 16 Dec. 2008 . http://www.reason.com/news/show/125438.html

Schramm, J.B. “The Best Anti-Terror Force: Us.” Operational Risk Management. 23 June 2004. 10 Dec. 2008 . http://operationalrisk.blogspot.com/2004/06/best-anti-terror-force-us.html

Slaton, Joyce. “What Price Patriotism?” SFGate. 15 Nov. 2001. San Francisco Chronicle. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/g/a/2001/11/15/patriotisp.DTL

I found this assignment interesting even though I did not learn much from it that I did not already know. Basically it confirms that I drink enough milk, eat an adequate amount of fruit and meat, and that I need more vegetables. My sodium intake, unlike most Americans, is, on average, within it’s limits. The average sodium intake for the 3 days is 2145mg, which is below the 2300mg limit. Basically if I were to simply add more vegetables to my diet I would be in good shape. Now if only vegetables tasted better…

I found several flaws with the system that we used for this assignment. Most of the food items that were in the database appeared to be from fast food restaurants, which is not a very good place to get information about food from. A cheeseburger from McDonald’s is going to have very different nutrient values when compared to a cheeseburger made at home by hand. This was my largest issue with this website. A shortcoming of this assignment was the time span that we were given. Three days (data points) is not enough quantitative data to obtain an informed opinion of what is going on. A full 30 or 60 days of data collection would have been much more informative and accurate, although I realize that it would have been unpractical to collect that much data for this class.

Although not related to the calculations themselves, the database server for the website either failed or went down for maintenance while I was attempting to input my list of food. That to me looks like bad management skills on behalf of the site owner and operator. (If you must preform website maintenance, you do so during off hours, not in the middle of a weekday). The website could also have been designed better. There should be a standard menu, like the one that can be found while adding food items to your day, that is shown on all screens. This would allow for easier navigation to the different features of the site. Overall, the website is very interesting, and I would recommend it to a friend interested in tracking their food intake.

In the not-so-distant future dwindling crude oil production capability will cause economic devastation on a large scale. This is not what I personally believe will happen, but what could be considered a worse case scenario. Peak Oil is a theory that was introduced in 1956 by Marion King Hubbert that is used to accurately predict the rate of oil extraction of a single oil well, oil field, region, country, and most recently applied to the entire world. Peak Oil is defined as the idea that the rate of oil extraction from a well follows a bell curve, starting off slow when the well is first discovered, rising exponentially as more equipment is used to extract the oil, reaching a peak, and then equally as quickly declining in output due to the increased difficulties of lower pressure, lower quality of oil, and other such issues. This is a proven concept on the individual oil well, field, region, and nation oil production level.

For the purpose of this essay it is assumed that the theory of peak oil applies to global production rates as well. It is a common misconception that reaching peak oil means that the world is running out of oil. In reality, that is far from the truth. Peak oil simply means that the maximum production RATE of oil has been reached, and then irreversibly declines from that point on. This would have a disastrous effect on the world.

It is common knowledge that almost everything that humans do in the western world depends heavily on fossil fuels, and oil in particular. Even relatively small changes to the ratio of supply and demand can have huge effects on the cost of oil. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example. For several weeks key oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico were shutdown, which decreased gasoline supply in the USA by several percentage points. As a result, gasoline and diesel prices around the country increased, in many places, dramatically. Running out of gasoline was not the problem (in most areas); it was the increasing cost of gasoline that was the issue.

At this point I’m going to begin my speculation. Based on the previous information I am going to extrapolate one possible outcome. The year is 2015 and although the global economy has been struggling to recover from the American financial crisis of 2008, life has been continuing more or less, business as usual. Crude oil prices have recently sharply risen due to a particularly cold winter, but nothing is really out of the ordinary. Spring comes and goes, but oil prices continue to rise. As the summer driving season begins oil prices set new records, beating out the previous highs of $150 per barrel set in 2008. Many families cancel summer vacations in order to save money.

The fall season has arrived, but oil prices are begging to rise at increasingly rapid rates, and most people are not sure why. People are driving less, there haven’t been any natural disasters of consequence, and the weather is mild, and yet still oil prices continue to rise. Most of the population still has no idea as to why prices continue to climb.

As the winter comes, things take a turn for the worse. It is now known that the reason prices are rising so quickly is that although global demand for oil has slowed in growth over the past year, oil supply has fallen from the year before. In particular, several key oil fields under OPEC have cut oil production rates after maintaining them at constant levels for the past two years. Global supply of oil has only shrunk 5 percent, but that was enough for demand to outstrip supply. This has the immediate effect of raising gasoline prices, but it also has many deeper reaching effects. Food prices will increase dramatically because the oils that fertilizer is made from have increased in cost. Transportation cost for everything from t-shirts, to building supplies, to food at the supermarket have skyrocketed due to rising diesel prices.

As time passes prices for all goods begin to increase as the cost of oil derived plastics, Styrofoam, and even medicine begin to feel the pressure from crude oil prices. The United States decides to take military action in the middle east in order to “spread democracy” and “liberate the local population”, while in reality is only interested in securing oil supply to itself. The action backfires and a shipping port is destroyed, cutting off a major trade route and further reducing the oil supply to the world, because most oil is transported by large ships. If the tanker ships can’t reach a function port to be filled with oil, then there is no way to transport the oil from the Middle East to other countries. What ports remain are stressed to the breaking point in order to keep up with demand.

Due to the further reduced global supply of all sorts of goods, the middle class struggles to stay functional. Some people resort to crime, stealing food from super markets, robbing gas stations late at night to get free gasoline, trucks and SUVs sit parked in driveways with empty fuel tanks. During the coldest parts of winter there is no longer any source of affordable heating oil, causing extremely cold conditions in northern regions. Soon mobs form, robbing downtown areas for much needed supplies. The government and police step in to try to contain the situation, but are stretched very thin themselves due to insufficient fuel budgets. Small unprepared police departments are soon overrun and a sense of lawlessness ensues. Governments are virtually powerless to help, immobilized by their un-prepairdness. As the winter nears its end, gasoline becomes so scarce that it is difficult to find a functioning gas station. Economies worldwide come to a crashing halt. These conditions could easily lead to war as countries try to fight for the few remaining large oil fields.

Whether these dire events actually take place in the manner previously described is up for debate, and should most likely be taken with a dose of salt, but the point illustrated remains valid. If even small disruptions in oil supply can cause gasoline prices to rise dramatically, peak oil occurring in an unprepared world could cause disastrous results.