Alternate Means of Communication

 

If anyone wants to arrange more secure messaging that respects users privacy, I'm on Signal, and I strongly recommend it to others. 

I've switched mobile providers and was unable to port my old number, so I've got a new Signal account. Message me directly to arrange contact transfer.

Oh, and in case anyone wants to connect there, I'm also on MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/cbyrneiv

And on Parler: https://parler.com/profile/Cbyrneiv

Though I don't really do much with either, since there isn't much to do, or many to do it with.

And of course, like everyone I'm still on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/cbyrneiv/

And twitter at: https://twitter.com/chrisbyrne

What an amazing world we live in...

I don't think I would ever buy something like this... For one thing, none of them are remotely big enough for me (you might get 20hp out of the absolute biggest of them, which is I believe about 300cc. I can't ride on the highway with that).

... But I absolutely LOVE that we live in a world where you can go to amazon, click a button, and get a motorcycle delivered to your door for short money (dirt bikes and scooters for as little as $750 with shipping, street bikes for less than $1500 shipped).

Don't Fail Closed Unless It's for Security

Apparently Plex... the leading home media server platform in the English speaking world... is down, (or at least partially and intermittently down) worldwide at the moment.

For about 60-90 minutes so far. They're working on it, and uou can check the status here: https://status.plex.tv/

To be clear... this isn't just the Plex web service and remote UI, local media servers are failing to display libraries and videos... Not every one, not all the time... but a lot of them, and by default (you have to manually access the direct URL for the media library you want to access, and somtimes that still fails).

It seems that they've got an API hook that calls home when you access your media server, and it's not supposed to be required for operations when there is internet access... but in practice, it IS required, because It's failing closed. That API hook is not completely down, but it's responding so slowly, that it is effectively down, as requests will time out most of the time from most servers etc...

Theoretically, if there's no internet access from your media server, and you access it locally via direct URI (local ip address, port, and path), your media server SHOULD just load the default page view. Though in my experience, this also fails sometimes on some clients.

UPDATE 2145utc : unless you access some specific URLs, some of their entire web domains or subdomains are timing out or giving server errors. 

I think they may have an infrastructure issue, as well as an API issue.

For example, as of right now, the main app URL and app URI are both giving a server error. https://plex.tv/app and https://plex.tv are both giving server errors.

But, if you access it by https://www.plex.tv the main page loads.... Until you try to sign in, at which point it starts timing out again. That's generally a session management, authentication management,  load balancing, or content distribution and delivery network issue. 

Then, if you attempt to sign in, sometimes it timesout without presenting the login dialog, sometimes the dialog loads, however every time the dialog loaded, my signin timed out sliently, either freezing, or just going back to the login prompt... But the really fun part, is that I got a "new login" notification email from Plex, even though the site wasn't actually granting me access. 

Doing some basic systematic investigation... it's definitely a session and authentication management issue somewhere... or likely a combination of issues stacking to cause the failure. Especially as it's a timeout issue and it's intermittent, and given the URL/URI issue, and the login and presentation issue It's most likely an interaction between their load balancing/content distribution, and their auth and session management API or backend service. 

This is a good lesson on why you don't implement optional non-security things, with "fail closed" dependencies. The default should be, if that API hook can't hit its call home, then the default page view appears. Not "plex is unreachable".

Now... There are lots of times when you want things to fail closed. When something is not actually optional, then yes, if that thing isn't available, you should fail closed, and provide a helpful error message as to why. If something is important for security reasons and it's not available, you should definitely fail closed... Often in those circumstances you should fail closed silently, without error output, or with just generic and non-helpful output, so that the failure in security is non-obvious.

... But you should never fail closed on something just because it's an option you want to have, but isn't necessary for functionality and security.

Your personal gratification, and "nice to have"... or your businesses desire to have some piece of data.. are MUCH less important than making sure your users have the best possible functionality and user experience, as much of the time as possible.

Sadly, it's a very common flaw in both implementation, and basic thought process.

Stop Calling Government Regulation Net Neutrality

Stop using "net neutrality" to refer to government regulation of the internet.

That's not what net neutrality is, and it's certainly not what the government regulations promulgated by the FCC today are, in this case "Common Carrier Rules".

People who don't know any better are celebrating todays faux "net neutrality" FCC action as a victory for freedom and free speech on the internet, when in fact, it's exactly the opposite.

I've written extensively about net neutrality and this is very much NOT it.

All the FCC has done today, is impose common carrier regulation on every ISP (oh and by the way, lots of other organizations as well who "provide internet access". No-one has any idea how the regulations are going to be finalized, what the language will mean, who will be impacted and how... except everyone knows it's going to cost a lot), instead of just the telephone companies it was already imposed on. Verizon for example, who was already one of the worst violators of net neutrality, even with common carrier regulation already in place for them.

Thus it makes competition and breaking of existing monopolies even harder, while not actually doing a damn thing to secure or improve neutrality... oh and it gives the FCC more control over the internet.

Absolutely none of those are good things.

Common carrier regulation is a big part of what made the current near monopolies on Internet access happy in the first place, because small independent companies couldn't compete with the giant Telcom conglomerates under those regulations. So, they all got swallowed up.

I've been working with telecommunications companies, and common carrier regulations, for more than 20 years. I'm an expert in governance and regulatory compliance, and I can tell you right now, NOBODY understands these regulations, because they are not capable of being understood.

These regulations and the rulings and case law associated with them go back to 1930s... and in some particulars all the way back to the 1870s. And of course, rather than replace them with something clear when they wanted to make new regulations, congress and the FCC just amended and added on and countermanded and...

I've flowcharted them before to try to see what applied how and where and when... the only thing I could come up with was "nobody knows for sure, it all depends what a regulator or judge says at the time".

This wasn't a blow for freedom and free speech... This was a giveaway to big corporate donors in the telecommunications industry.

The big telcos have been trying to get their primary competition, non-telco ISPs, burdened with the same regulatory load they labor under, for DECADES. Now, in one stroke, the FCC at the personal direction of the president, has given it to them.

Oh and guess what else common carrier regulation includes... SURVEILLANCE. All common carriers are required to provide the government and law enforcement "reasonable access" for surveillance, as well as to give up records, usage details, and other subscriber and user data, WITHOUT A WARRANT.

What does "reasonable access" mean? Whatever the government says it means... and if you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not. I've dealt with the FBI on this issue, and that's a direct quote.

Yes, this is not only a massive corporate crony handout, it's also a huge gimme to the FBI and the NSA, who have wanted all ISPs stuck under common carrier for years as well.

Stop calling government regulation of the internet "net neutrality". Letting the liars control the language helps them lie to you.

Net neutrality is not government regulation, and these regulations are certainly not net neutrality, nor anything like it. Don't be taken in by fraud, cronyism, and statism, masquerading as freedom.

Net Neutrality… Obama… Cruz… How About Oliver?

Today, Barack Obama(D) has announced that he will pretend to support net neutrality:



In response, Ted Cruz (RPDGC*), has announced that Net Neutrality is the work of the devil:

"Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) November 10, 2014

The idea that either Democrats OR Republicans actually support net neutrality is a joke.

The Democrats have (and still do) very strongly supported big media and big communications, who are largely anti neutrality. It’s only now that net neutrality has obviously become a big issue among young liberals (who were largely unmotivated to turn out this midterm election), that they have pretended to support it.

The Dems could have made it a campaign issue, except then they wouldn’t have had the huge media and communications industry money for the elections, that they needed to avoid getting spanked even worse than they did.

If Obama had actually supported net neutrality, he wouldn’t have appointed an anti neutrality industry stooge as FCC chair… but again, if he did that, the Dems would have lost that sweet sweet big media money.

On the other hand, the Republicans are largely anti “big media” and anti “big communications”, and only became anti-neutrality when the Democrats decided to take it as an issue.

What is Net Neutrality?

Frankly, any libertarian should support net neutrality as a principle (government regulation is another matter).

Net neutrality as a principle, is simple. All legitimate traffic should be treated equally, no matter the source or destination. No internet service provider should filter, censor, or slow down traffic from their competitors, their critics, or because of politics or national origin; or for any reason other than technical requirements for safe, efficient, and reliable network operation.

It’s how the internet has always been run, up until recently, without any government action necessary. There’s a famous quote: “The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”. Any internet service provider that censored, filtered, or slowed down traffic from anyone (for anything other than technical reasons) was routed around, and cut out of the net, by its peers. It was a great example of independent action and peer enforcement working in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.

Why is it an issue now?

Large media and communications companies like Comcast and Verizon have been deliberately and artificially blocking or slowing down traffic to and from their critics and competitors.

Of course, getting government involved does generally make things worse. In fact, it already did in this case, since the government has been involved from the beginning, and it was largely government action that created the current problem.

In a rational and unbiased competitive environment, consumers would have a reasonable choice of internet service providers, and any ISP that chose to censor or limit access, would lose customers, and either correct themselves or go out of business.

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything like a free and competitive market in internet access. Government regulation and favoritism has created huge monopolies (or at best duopolies, and no, wireless access is not realistic and reasonable competition given the distorted market and cost structures there either) in internet access.

We've reached a point where the telecommunications monopolies that government created and support, are in fact deliberately applying anticompetitive, unfair (and in some cases already unlawful) restraint against their critics and competitors.

Since they are government supported monopolies, the market is not allowed to correct the undesirable private action.

This means that, unfortunately, government action IS required… and even if it were not required, it’s inevitable, because politics is politics, and this is now an “Issue”.

So what do we do about the problem?

Please note, I don’t trust either Democrats OR Republicans on the issue in general, and I don’t trust either, or the FCC to regulate neutrality at all. Cruz does have at least one valid concern, in that the history of government regulation of almost every industry, but particularly technology, is mainly a long record of suppressing innovation and other negative unintended consequences.

The ideal solution is to end the government created internet access monopolies that most Americans live under, and allow free and open market competition to correct the problem.

Without government limitations on competition in actual high speed, high quality internet access; competition will increase, prices will fall, and any provider that filters or slows legitimate traffic will lose all their customers and go out of business.

This isn't just a prediction or libertarian idealism talking by the way. It’s been proved out in Korea, Japan… even in the UK. Everywhere that internet access competition has been allowed to flourish, everything has improved (conversely, in the U.S. where we have deliberately increased the power and scope of these monopolies, we have the worst internet access of any technologically advanced nation).

Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen.

The next best thing, is to mandate net neutrality in the least intrusive, least stupid way possible, and to react intelligently (and rapidly) to changes in technology and its uses, to avoid regulatory distortion and suppression of innovation.

Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen either…

That said, it’s remotely possible for us get closer to that, quicker, than we can to disassembling the thousands of federal, state, and local regulations, which have created these monopolies, and made the barriers to entry for competition impossibly high.

Of course neither Democrats nor Republicans support or plan to do that.

The whole thing is a spiraling charlie fox of disingenuous cynical idiocy.

Personally, I say forget Obama, forget Cruz, and listen to Oliver (or if you don't care for Oliver, or can't watch a video, theres The Oatmeal):



*Reactionary Populist Disingenuous Grandstanding Cynic... not the Republican party, just Cruz

Let's all get screwed over JUST A LITTLE BIT LESS

This... in it's entirety. Not one single word said here is incorrect in any way.

This is not a left, right, or libertarian issue... it's an EVERYONE GETTING SCREWED MORE issue.

Let's all try to get screwed JUST A LITTLE BIT LESS people.

Internet has been spotty here since Monday

Which is why I have not posted what I wanted to the last few days.

As I've mentioned before, I'm on microwave internet service. A small microwave antenna sits high on the side of my house, pointing to the top of a 7,000 foot mountain about 10 miles slant range from me.

It's March. It's windy, and it's still snowing on the mountains, and unfortunately, there was a power outage on the top of the mountain for a day or so; and some intermittent network issues since then.

Unfortunately, I've been having some major internet problems generally for a few months; ever since they "upgraded" to new radio equipment late last year (including a radio "upgrade" for me).

Finally, after a few months of refunding me for service (I have a QOS guarantee) they decided to use the opportunity of the power cut to replace the node on the mountain, which they did yesterday, and this morning; and also my radio.

Analog RF engineering geekitude ahead....

They've upgraded me from a single band radio with a horizontally oriented plate radio, to a dual band, MIMO unity capable radio, with cross oriented poles and a dish instead of a plate.

That has upgraded me from a single 28Mbit wide channel to two 56Mbit wide channels. I also went from 18db above the noise floor to 28db above the noise floor.

My contract says I should get a minimum 1.5Mbit synchronus sustained with burst up to 8Mbit.

On the old radio gear I was MAXING out at 1.4Mbit, and only averaging a couple hundred Kbit.

That's why I've been getting refunded on my service since December.

On the new gear I'm maxing out at 8Mbit with an average of around 2Mbit.

I'm a hell of a lot happier about that. Of course, now I have to start paying them again.

Oh and my latency is spectacular by the way. I'm getting under 20ms to a commercial server in Seattle, under 30ms to Dallas, and under 100ms to London.

That's rather important since my "landline" is VOIP over this internet connection. Anyone who has called me in the last few months knows that my landline was iffy. Near as I can tell now, it's pretty good.

It's not exactly flying cars but...

Sometimes we forget how amazing the world we live in today is; and frankly, for all that sucks about life (and god knows, there's plenty of that to obsess over). just how great it is to be an American today.

This Louis C.K. video (or similar vids from Adam Carolla and Patton Oswalt) has been linked so much it's beyond viral and into the cliche zone (I would insert the ironic trademark symbol here, but that would be even more cliche)... but the reason it's become cliche, it's because it's so completely and obviously true:

There was a great commercial back in 2000 (for IBM actually), narrated by the incredible voice of Avery Brooks (a.k.a. Hawk from Spenser for Hire, and Captain Sisko from DS9 ) where he says "where are the flying cars. I was promised flying cars":

That commercial is so popular, when I typed in the name "Avery Brooks" into my youtube search box, the very first thing the auto-complete came up with was "Avery Brooks flying cars".

God knows, I'm a geek, a futurist of sorts... hell, I'm even, literally, a rocket scientist (well... an airplane and rocket engineer. I have a degree in aerospace engineering) by education; so yeah, I've quoted that commercial about a billion times.

Anyway, the whole thing above is about the expectations we set for ourselves 40 and 50 years ago. Where we thought we would be, and how we would be doing things... how much we thought the world would have changed.

We thought that by 2000 we'd be the Jetsons. Instead, it's now almost 2012, and in a lot of ways, things haven't really changed.

Oh that isn't to say I'm discounting the many fundamental and revolutionary changes that have occurred in society, and in technology in that time... but life today would be MOSTLY recognizable to someone from 1962.

Mostly...

It's actually pretty amazing to see what we got right, what we got wrong... but more interesting to me, is the things we never even thought of; and how those have changed our lives, and the world, in ways we never could have predicted.

Forty five years ago in "Star Trek"; Gene Roddenberry looked into a world 300 years in the future, and he saw interstellar travel, and a post scarcity society (with instantaneous rearranging of bulk matter into whatever you want, no substance is rare or scarce, except those few we cannot manipulate; and with near limitless energy... the only scarcity is on the periphery of civilization)... but computers still took up rooms, and we all still accessed big central mainframes by remote links from essentialy dumb terminals and i/o devices.

He reasonably accurately predicted cell phones and pervasive communications technologies; but completely missed mobile computing, pervasive computing, and mobile data networks.

The most amazing thing is though, in America, even the periphery has access to the comforts and conveniences that our technological society has afforded us.

Two years ago, my wife and I decided to move someplace, and live full time, where we would want to vacation. Someplace beautiful, quiet, peaceful... someplace away from everything. We chose to move to, EXTREMELY rural, Bonner County, in north Idaho.

This is where we live:

You might note, there isn't any urbanization anywhere near the middle of that picture. I live on the shore of that big lake, in the middle of those big woods, in the middle of those big mountains (in between the Selkirk and Cabinet ranges of the Rockies), in the middle of... nowhere.

The nearest city of more than 100,000 people (Spokane, WA) is about 65 miles away. That picture represents about 100 miles square, bounded at the top by the Canadian border, at the bottom by Coeur D'Alene, on the west by Spokane, and on the east by Libby, Montana.

Although about 750,000 people live in the area shown on this map (which, given that's 10,000 square miles is actually almost nothing. It's 75 people per square mile; about half the average population density of the earth, and about 10% less than the U.S. average) about 675,000 of them live in that bottom corner, between Spokane and Coeur D'Alene.

From the Bonner county line, just north of Athol Idaho, to the Canadian border, and in between those two dark lines representing the WA and MT state borders; is 3300 square miles (about 70-75 miles high depending on where you are, and exactly 45 miles wide). That area has a total population of less than 50,000; almost all of whom live in the dozen or so small towns (the largest is 7,000, most are under 500) and unincorporated townships (including us) within 5 miles of the two US highways (us95 and us2) that run north/south, and roughly east/west.

There are more remote, and more sparsely populated areas in the lower 48 of course; but not many. We are very definitely "away from it all", "in gods country" etc... We are Rural with a capitol R.

I'm not saying it was a hardship, by any means. In fact, I think it's among the best decisions we'ver ever made, and I honestly believe it has saved my life. It simply means we had to give up, or accept lesser quality or variety of; many of the luxuries and conveniences we had become accustomed to in the modern American Urban Island.

One of those compromises, was in communications.

Internet access is much more difficult and expensive here than it was in Scottsdale; and smart phones, less useful; because you don't have the pervasive high speed networking you do in the urban island, and because connectivity in general is spotty in the region (both because of the lack of sites, and because of the terrain; which is pretty rugged once you get off the main road).

When we moved up here we were both on AT&T (with iPhones), and we had to change to Verizon; because although AT&T offers service in region, that service was (and still is) poor, with extremely iffy coverage.

Of course, the fact that in a community 50 miles from an interstate highway, you could get both wireless voice, and data service, AT ALL, is an amazing thing; we've grown pretty spoiled and lazy and expect everything everywhere... but again, that's Louis C.K.s rant above.

Also, it turns out that moving to Verizon was great; because we moved on to the Android platform, which we much prefer to the iPhone (for many reasons, as I've gone into many times here before).

At any rate, when we moved here we switched to Verizon.

When we switched, they had good voice coverage but marginal data coverage and speed. However, within a few months they had upgraded the 3g coverage and speed in our area, such that our smart phones were once again the useful little limpets we had become addicted to living in the metroplex.

Our primary internet access was (and still is) a different story however.

Where we live, in an unincorporated area a few miles south of the county seat (Sandpoint, population about 7,000) there actually is some DSL and cablemodem service; but it doesn't extend as far south as we are. Our options were dialup, satellite (completely unacceptable), and microwave (expensive, but high bandwidth and low latency).

We chose to go with microwave; and for the most part we've been happy with it. The kicker is, the cost: We pay $180 a month for a business class 5Mbit synchronous connection, two static IPs, and two VOIP lines.

That's a lot.

Most people in this country pay $50 or less for their internet access (admittedly, slower than us. The average DSL speed is 512k and the average cablemodem is 1.5Mbit; but also the low end service rates are usually $30 or $40 a month); and in most major urban areas in this country, you can get a 10Mbit or even 20Mbit connection at home with your cable company, for $49 to $79 a month.

We could be paying a lot less for non-business class service; but that would be at 512k bandwidth, no VOIP capability, and no quality of service guarantee. With the business class service, what I'm really paying for is the guarantee that I'll get the bandwidth and the latency I've been paying for (or I don't pay).

I need that guarantee, to run my business, and to be able to work from home for my corporate masters; as I did for most of the last two years.

It's also why we won't be changing any times soon; even though it is so expensive. No other service locally, can give us the guarantee that we're going to get the bandwidth, latency, or uptime that we need.

We looked at the possibility of using the Verizon 3g service as our primary internet; but the combination of limited bandwidth, monthly data caps, and no quality of service made that impractical and a poor value for us.

But this post is about how much we have, even though we ARE so rural; not what we don't have.

As of this morning, what we have, is 5 to 12 megabit 4g wireless service.

A few months back Mel and I upgraded our 18 month old Droid Xs, to Droid Bionics, with 4g capability. I also got a 4g MiFi router for when I travel (it looked like I was going to be doing a lot of travel at the time... I probably will be again too).

They've been great, but we only had 3g up til today; with a theoretical bandwidth of about 2Mbit, and realistically a couple hundred Kbit of actual bandwidth (it's not nothing sure; but it's not really enough for everything you might want to do).

I did a speed test from my phone earlier... 8Mbit a second.

In Sagle Idaho, the middle of nowhere, I get 8Mbps... Enough to live stream HDTV, or download a full DVD... on my PHONE.

It's not flying cars, but it's something.

Oh so true and annoying...

Facebook - it Ain't for College Students Anymore

So I woke up this morning and I check my email on my phone before I even get out of bed.

Yes, it's incredibly geeky, I know.

So one of my cousins spent some time on Facebook last night sending me friend recommendations so I've got several emails from Facebook in my inbox. I'm scrolling though them, going "cousin, cousin, cousin, holy crap Grandpa?!?!"

My 93-year-old grandfather just joined Facebook.

This is the same man who learned to use a computer at 88 so he could get pictures and email from his grandkids (and great-grandkids, and great-great-grandkids). He was so new to computers that my aunt had to explain the concept of the backspace key because his typing was bad and he was used to typewriters (his emails arrived with the typos at the bottom of the page).

Grandpa is officially internet savvy.

This is awesome though. He just became completely deaf after years of hearing loss so he can't talk on the phone anymore, but he can still read and write. Facebook will help him immensely.

He's just somewhat older than the original group of users.

Mel

Rural Connectivity

So, as I mentioned a few days ago, we're moving in a few weeks.

Where we're moving, we're going to have several internet options; all of them wireless.

The good news, is that there are both DSL and cablemodem providers in the area.

The BAD news, is that as of today, we're just 200 feet beyond where the signal path degrades too much; on both the local cable company, and the local phone company (Verizon) DSL.

The further good news, is that we've got full 3g from Verizon in the area. The further bad news is that Verizon has a 5gig a month download limit for consumer accounts. Obviously not acceptable for my current internet use.

That said, I WILL be getting a 3g USB adapter and UNLIMITED service paid for by my employer. Right now they pay for tethering on my blackberry, but you can't use voice and data simultaneously, and I'm certainly going to need that. No problem, they'll spring for the USB 3G adapter and account as another option; and with our corporate account, they don't put any download limit on our wireless broadband usage.

So, that give me work access, and perhaps a backup to my primary connection.

The third piece of good news, is that we have two other wireless options. The first, is satellite internet; which we can get at a substantial discount in a bundle from Verizon with landline, DirecTV (and don't get me going about how much I'm going to LOVE giving up my TiVO to be stuck on DirecTV...), and WildBlue.

The wildblue ProPackage actually seems like a great deal, for a satellite ISP anyway. 1.5Mbit down, 256k up, and a 17gig monthly download limit (considerably higher than most other sat providers).

However, there are three disadvantages to satellite net:

1. The download limit. 17gb is much better than the 5gb offered by most providers, but it's still throttled and limited.
2. The latency. Sat net has a latency too high for VOIP and video conferencing, and can be iffy for some VPN connectivity.
3. The weather degradation. Sat net degrades significantly in heavy rain, and heavy snow; both of which are a factor where we're moving.

Thankfully, because we're in direct line of sight to two different microwave repeaters, we have a third option: microwave wireless internet (not WiMax, classic point to point wireless).

We can get 3Mbps synchronous (for those not ISP savvy, that means we get both 3 meg up AND down. Usually you get asynchronous data, with much lower upload rates than download rates), at low latency, with no bandwidth limit, and up to five static IP's for just $80 a month (believe me, thats a good price for wireless broadband, and getting a static IP at all is great). From the same provider we can get as much as three times that, for up to around $200 a month.

So, that is what we're going to do for our primary connection. We'll start out with the 3meg option, and if we need more, we'll pay the upcharge.

However, microwave is not without disadvantages itself. In particular, it has the same issues with heavy weather as satellite net does. Of course we're rather a bit closer to the transceiver (twenty-two thousand someodd miles closer), so the signal strength and discrimination will be higher; but it's also on frequencies that are more sensitive to water in the atmosphere. So rain/snow fade is still an issue.

So, our plan is to take the combination of terrestrial microwave internet, and the 3g wireless (which doesn't really get weather fade except in the most extreme conditions... besides which there's 5bar coverage at our new address), in a loadshare/failover configuration.

Near as I can tell, the best way to do that right now is with a cradlepoint home office router. There are other solutions available, through non specialist vendors; but no other router solution offers automatic load balancing, failover, and QOS, with as much support for different wireless USB adapters... at least as far as I know.

Of course I could build a little linux box router and config it myself... and I may still do that if I investigate the Cradlepoint more and find a linux router might do the job better; but I suspect that won't be the case because of 3g modem support (which can be iffy on linux).

There may be even MORE complexity here, in that the bundle pricing for landline, sat tv and sat net, is actually the same price as doing just landline and sat tv... so I may end up going with a THREE way load balancing/failover/load sharing. If it doesn't cost me anything extra, why not.

At that point, I'm pretty sure I'll have to go to a custom linux router box. I don't know of any consumer router that can support threw way provider diversity... hell I may grab a couple of "real" routers (as in small office routers or firewalls from a major networking vendor) and rig something up there... though somehow I doubt anyone is going to let me run BGP over their wireless networks...

The Internet Ate My Brain

So last week I stumbled across googles interview archive on youtube. Lemme 'splain...

So since 2005, Google has hosted about 600 authors, writers, film makers, musicians, and chefs; for one hour talks, lectures, or interviews.

Predictably, it being Google, there's some pretty hard lefty folks up there; but also predictably for Google, there are a bunch of cool SF authors up there, as well as internet culture commentators, humorists etc...

Coincidentally, I've been going through an extended period of severe insomnia; averaging about two hours of sleep a night since a couple day before Christmas.

Predictably, me being me, since I found the full archive I've been watching them one after another. Of course me being me, I'm still reading my 100+ web sites per day, and I've been reading adventure and SF novels with the interviews as background noise.

Yeah, I believe in information overload.

Actually, the one good thing about insomnia, is that it lets me catch up on reading. My current "to read" pile is up over 200 books; and since the day before Christmas, I've managed to reduce that pile by 13 books... Of course also in that time I've received 9 more...

It never ends.

So I thought I'd post up a list of the ones I dig, that way you don't need to dig through all 600 videos. Oh, and some UNC chapel hill interviews are mixed in there, just because they're good.

Here's one of the funniest ones, from the writer of "Stuff White People Like":

and a great one from Neil Gaiman:

Google Interviews:

YouTube - AtGoogleTalks's Channel

YouTube - Authors@Google: Neil Gaiman

YouTube - Authors@Google: Neal Stephenson

YouTube - Authors@Google: Charles Stross

YouTube - Authors@Google: Cory Doctorow

YouTube - Authors@Google: Cory Doctorow

YouTube - Cory Doctorow: Pwned: How Copyright turns us all into IP ser

YouTube - Authors@Google: Randall Munroe

YouTube - Authors@Google: Christian Lander, "Stuff White People Like"

YouTube - Authors@Google: Marco Pierre White

YouTube - Authors@Google: Anthony Bourdain

YouTube - Authors@Google: Mario Batali

YouTube - Authors@Google: James Randi

YouTube - Authors@Google: Steve Wozniak

YouTube - Authors@Google: Stan Lee

YouTube - Authors@Google: Daniel Wilson & Anna Long

YouTube - Authors@Google: Greg Bear

YouTube - Authors@Google: Kyle Cassidy

YouTube - Authors@google: Gary Vaynerchuk

YouTube - Authors@ Google: Joe Haldeman

YouTube - Authors@Google: Bjorn Lomborg

YouTube - Authors@Google: Douglas Engelbart

YouTube - Authors@Google: Steven Levy

YouTube - Authors@Google: Lawrence Lessig

YouTube - Authors@Google: Masaharu Morimoto

YouTube - Authors@Google: Michael Carroll

YouTube - Authors@Google: Robert Frank

YouTube - Authors@Google: James Watson

YouTube - Authors@Google: Jeffrey Kluger

YouTube - Authors@Google: David Michaels

YouTube - Authors@Google: Alex Roy

YouTube - Authors@Google - Chris Anderson

YouTube - Authors@Google: Dan Ariely

YouTube - Authors@Google: Eric Ripert

YouTube - Authors@google: Sam Gosling

Other than the two I embedded above, I particularly recommend Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow (all three), Charlie Stross, Randall Munroe (I hope y'all are reading XKCD), Marco Pierre White, and Anthony Bourdain.

The Woz one is amazing, but the audio and video quality are crap. It's worth it if you're into that geek history thing, but it might irritate you too much.

Anyway, I know my audience, y'all are probably going to waste as much time as I have... or at least proportionally.

The Gun Counter

So... big day today...

This morning, Kim and Connie DuToit announced that they would be "retiring" from blogging (does it count as retiring if it isn't a job or a sport?) on November 30th.

Well, I'll be sorry to see them go. I'll certainly miss seeing Kims wit employed on a daily basis, against those who deserve it most.

...But that's not why I'm busy right now.

As part of their retirement, the DuToits will also be closing down the gunthing.com forums; which I have been a member of since the day they opened (I wrote the 4th new topic posted) jsut over four years ago.

I've had the pleasure of moderating the forums for most of the past four years. I was the first moderator that Kim and Connie tapped, when it was still directly attached to Kimdutoit.com. I was the sole moderator for about a year, then we re-organized as the Nation of Riflemen forums, and I was joined by CombatController and 308Mike. Finally we split the Naation of Riflemen off into a separate site, focused on educating new shooters; and continued the more random forum as the gunthing.com forums; soon after which, Randy joined us as a moderator.

I think that in those four years, we've built the best internet community I've ever been a part of. I've made more friends from this group of people than at any other time in my life except the Air Force; and I've met more great folks through our community than at any other time and place in my life.

I'll be very sad to see the gunthing.com forums close down.

Thankfully, many of the members of the gunthing community don't want to see it go away. We've formed a tight knit community, and we'd like to keep it together. So, I, and the other current moderators of the gunthing.com forums, CombatController, 308Mike, and Randy; will be opening, and running a new community site, forum, and wiki, for the members of the gunthing; and for anyone else who cares to join, is interested in the community, and is willing to follow the (pretty simple) rules.

Let me be clear, this new site is only affiliated with the gunthing.com in that we will share some members. theguncounter.com is not owned, operated, or affiliated with the DuToits in any way, nor do they endorse it etc... They said they were retiring, they meant it.

Also let me say how thankful I am to the DuToits for initiating this community, and for supporting and helping to build and maintain it over the years. They've done me personally, and I think the gun world as a whole, a great service.

Well, I guess it's time to get our butts in gear then isn't it.

When the gunthing.com forums were first split off from the Nation of Riflemen site; we sort of chartered oruselves as a place where people could go and talk about... well, all the things that you would talk about standing at the counter in your local gunshop... except without the tactical tommies, and the nosales people (if you don't know what either of those are, you really do need to join our community).

I thought that gun counter metaphor was a pretty good one for the kind of community we've formed. It really captures the type of talk we do... A bit of bragging (not too much), a bit of joking, a bit of pride in our toys and our kids, and our hobbies and adventures ... and a WHOLE HECK OF A LOT OF ARGUING... In a good natured way of course.

So, we've registered theguncounter.com (as of 7/29/08 just a placeholder), and over the next few days and weeks, we will be building the site to host our community.

As of right now, we aren't looking for any money; and hopefully we won't ever need to. The hosting is being generously provided by CombatController, who happens to own a small ISP. I'll be doing the primary administration work (yeah... I've got time for that... somewhere... it's not like I sleep), and the current moderators of the gunthing.com forums will be moving to theguncounter.com as moderators.

At some point, we may be asking for some time from some folks; to try and get some content or formatting and themes generated; and we've already got several volunteers.

Thanks guys, we definitely appreciate it, and when we're ready we'll come calling.

Right now though, what we need from you is patience while we get things up and running. It can be fiddly business building a community site that is secure, robust, functional, and attractive.

In the mean time, the gunthing.com forums will be up and running until the end of November, and we're still partying on over there (or is it ranting on... or maybe doddering on... I get confused sometimes).

Iran

After the third cable cut, I heard from friends in a position to know on this one; that it was near certain they were deliberate cuts, probably by Iran.

Now the ITU is basically confirming it... though they don't absolutely confirm it (and probably never will), the chances this was anything but deliberate are basically zero.

Sea cable snappage was sabotage Middle eastern cables destroyed deliberately By Nick Farrell: Tuesday, 19 February 2008, 7:46 AM THE International Telecommunication Union has claimed that a spate of telecommunication outages to the Middle East were the result of sabotage. Five undersea cables were damaged causing huge disruption to Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and south Asia. Union spokesman Sami al-Murshed, told AFP said that while there was still an ongoing investigation into the incidents it would seem that there was a deliberate act of sabotage. While it was possible that one cable could have been damaged by a ship's anchor the others were too deep. Besides the chances of five cables being cut within a two week period was unlikely. Murshed said on the sidelines of a conference on cyber-crime held in Gulf state of Qatar that the cables lie at great depths under the sea and are not passed over by ships.

1994 is calling, they want their dialup back

Actually, I'm getting a whole 243k theoretical, and about 180k actual speed at the moment; more like the multi channel ISDN I had in Ireland in 2001.

My ISP (Qwest choice - not regular Qwest, an entirely different division, with different tech support, different billing systems, different everything really) is currently experiencing a major regional failure. Apparently the have a trunk cut and a router failure, and it's knocked out Qwest choice customer in all of Chandler, Glendale, Scottsdale, and parts of Tempe and Phoenix.

Joy.

So I am currently enjoying the thrilling speeds and convenience of access provided by EDGE-G2, through my smartphone.

Though my phone is capable of 3.5G speeds over UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA, my mobile provider is unfortunately not; at least not until either later in 2008, when in theory they will be rolling out 14Mbit/sec download speeds (to crush AT&T and Verizons offerings).

Coincidentally this is set to show up right around the time the next generation iPod is supposed to also show up, sporting 3.5g hardware.

Unfortunately, Qwest couldn't give me a firm estimate as to how long the outage would be. It's already been three hours, and they expect at least another 3, maybe as much as 8.

I say again, joy.

Normally this isn't too big deal. I can certainly live without the internet for a few hours. The problem is, I work from home, and all my work is done over the VPN into the office. No internet, rather obviously no VPN. No VPN, no work. No work bad.

Further, the VPN client and the phones internet connection do not get along. It works over a 3g/3.5g connection,. but there's something about the way edge works that just makes the Crisco 3000 concentrators VPN client go insane. I've tried it with many different VPNs, on several different systems, and I can never seem to get it to work properly for more than a few minutes at a time.

Did I mention I couldn't wait until t-mobile gets 3/3.5G? It's almost enough to make me want to switch to AT&T (we're GSM people)... almost, but not quite.

UPDATE: Looks like we went back up around 3am.

Of course in reviewing my firewall logs to figure that out, I discover that I'm being constantly portscanned from ports 135 to 65535, from sources 130.13.0.0 - 130.13.255.254; with some extra special hits on typical vuln ports. Storm worm botnet probably; but the fact that they've compromised an entire class B... oy.

So I call up the abuse admin at Qwest, and they don't even know about this netblock. It's some old local Denver thing from when Qwest was MUCH smaller, and it's not even supposed to be routed right now. They don't know what's going on, or who's responsible for it.

I'd say "wow, that makes me so confident in Qwest" except I didn't have any confidence to begin with.