A group in Worcester, Mass., (of all places) was key in the anti-SOPA protests

Posted by David Brooks    |    Friday, January 27, 2012

The Globe has a long story today about Fight for the Future, a geeky non-profit based in Worcester, Mass. - hardly a geek hotbed - instrumental in organizing the anti-SOPA/PIPA protests that derailed the proposed Net-censorship laws.

It's a good story that does what a good story from a local newspaper should do: Inform us about something interesting nearby that we didn't know existed.

I can't link you to it, though, because of the Globe's paywall - you have to be a subscriber to read it. Annoying? Sure, but how else are good stories like that going to be created in future if there's no money to pay for them?

Four bucks a week isn't bad for a subscription, really. Here's the form.

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This year, IPv6 Day will be for real

Posted by David Brooks    |    Friday, January 27, 2012

New Hampshire has a local connection to the long, long process of switching the Internet over to IPv6, the bigger and better addressing system, thanks to UNH's Interoperability Lab, so let's take note of the fact that this year's IPv6 Day in June, unlike last year's, will be the real thing. Ars Technica notes:

Most of us won't really notice, at least not yet, but eventually the switch has to occur or the Internet tubes will get all clogged up.

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Vermont pursues a fiber-optic network smart grid, with IBM

Posted by David Brooks    |    Wednesday, January 25, 2012

From Greentech Media:

This is the part of the story that was startling:

Terabits per second?!?! Holy cow. Read the whole story here.

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Segway's 10th birthday is muted, but its pod-car project with GM is still alive, sort of

Posted by David Brooks    |    Wednesday, January 25, 2012

This is the EN-V Pride from GM ... or, at least, this is the plastic shell for it. Whether it actually moves is uncertain.

December was the 10th anniversary of the Segway's arrival, an anniversary that pretty much went unnoticed (I did a short blog post and nothing for The Telegraph). The firm's presence in the region has faded since Dean Kamen sold it.

The Union-Leader, once the home to all things Segway, has a feeble little press release today saying that Segway is going to do ... well, something, I'm not sure what ... to celebrate the decade since the devices were first sold to the public.

The most interesting thing that Segway is doing at the moment (visible to the public, anyway) is a joint project with GM to create a small but enclosed, electric powered people-mover. A pod car, if you will. Wicked cool: just look at that photo! Whether it will ever be reality is another question. But it's fun to think about.

Here's the original announcement. Here's an update from a site called jalopnik.

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No Northern Lights here last night, alas

Posted by David Brooks    |    Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The solar storm didn't seem to produce any Northern Lights this far south last night. I got up at 1 a.m., after the clouds had lifted, but didn't see anything, and SpaceWeather.com, a NOAA site, didn't indicate the aurorae were making it here. Darn.

There was some impressive stuff further north, according to SpaceWeather: "This was one of the best Northern Lights displays that I've ever seen, and I mean ever in over 5000 hours on the ice," says Andy Keen of Inari, Finland."

That sound you hear is me writhing in envy.

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Decent chance of Northern Lights tonight - although a few satellites may get zapped in the process

Posted by David Brooks    |    Tuesday, January 24, 2012

A major coronal mass ejection - solar storm - took place Monday and the charged particles are about to hit Earth's magnetic field, creating the possibility of Northern Lights tonight. And it's supposed to be clear - I'm heading out to a north-facing hill when it gets dark.

Our magnetic field channels solar particles toward the poles, which is why we don't have Equatorial Aurorae.

The drawback to such storms is that satellites and communication can be affected.

The Bad Astronomy blog has lots and lots about the whole thing: Check it here.

Here's a Popular Mechanics story about the potential for such storms to do real damage: Read it here.

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Would a self-driving car be so polite that it would snarl traffic around it?

Posted by David Brooks    |    Tuesday, January 24, 2012

One thing I hate when driving are "politeness contests", in which a driver doesn't make an obvious right-of-way move, such as taking their turn at a four-way stop sign, out of misplaced politeness. This paralyzes everybody else because you are no longer certain about what that two-ton vehicle to your left is going to do - you don't want to enter the intersection if they suddenly decide it's their turn, after all. The result is a lot of hesitation, frantic waving of hands, and delay. Very annoying.

The development of autonomous cars raises the specter of politeness contests, as the NY Times notes in a story today: "When it stops at a four-way intersection, would it be too polite to take its turn ahead of aggressive human drivers (or equally polite robots)?"

The article argues that non-technical issues, like insurance and how police will deal with them, are more of an obstacle to self-driving vehicles than is technology.

Read the article here (subscription required).

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New England's biggest lake ices over less often than in the past, although it's not just global warming

Posted by David Brooks    |    Sunday, January 22, 2012

From the Burlington Free-Press:

Freeze-up records have been kept for the lake since the early part of the 19th century. The data showed that in each decade from the 1820s through the 1920s, the lake froze every year, or stayed open just once in each 10-year period. The lake failed to close twice in the 1930s, then once in the 1940s.

Since then, freeze-overs are far less likely. In the 1980s and 2000s, the lake froze over in just half the years each decade. In the 1990s, the lake froze completely in just three winters. Lake Champlain has not completely frozen over since March 2007.

A 2010 Nature Conservancy report noted that when the lake does freeze over, it happens on average two weeks later in the winter than it did during the 19th century.

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Chess programs are in a heated battle - over plagiarism, not Ruy Lopez opening

Posted by David Brooks    |    Monday, January 23, 2012

The folks behind two leading chess-playing programs, Fruit and Rybka, are involved in a heated tussle over whether one of them copied code from the other. From the BoingBoing article:

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From a Roman Numeral point of view, this will be an interesting Super Bowl

Posted by David Brooks    |    Sunday, January 22, 2012

The next Super Bowl is the 46th, which in pompous-football-numbering-system is XLVI. That's is an interesting Roman Numeral because it is the lowest number that can be expressed as four distinct digits* in Roman Numerals.

No, wait ... XLIV (44) beat it. Darn that confusing "sometimes you add, sometimes you subtract" system. I wonder if Roman Numerals are the only counting system that included subtractive summation due to digit position? Hmmm ... sounds like a future column.

The biggest four-distinct-digit Roman Numeral is 1,650 (MDCL), because they didn't seem to develop distinct digits for numbers bigger than 1,000.

* is "digit" the right word with Roman Numerals? Maybe "character" is better.

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Future of Vermont Yankee nuke plant still uncertain, despite judge's OK

Posted by David Brooks    |    Saturday, January 21, 2012

I missed the fact that a judge ruled in favor of the owner of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, in the fight over whether the state of Vermont can force it to shut down next month when its license runs out. So I'll just steal the story from the Brattleboro Reformer, which begins:

• The future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant may have become a little clearer Thursday when a federal judge ruled in Entergy's favor, but many experts say its continued operation isn't a done deal yet. Attorney General William Sorrell's office has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha.
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Was SOPA win a one-time Net event or a sign of things to come?

Posted by David Brooks    |    Saturday, January 21, 2012

I think it was wikipedia's participation that pushed the anti-SOPA/PIPA protest over the top and forced both Houses of Congress to back down. The US House had already shelved it following protests, while the Senate did the same post-blackout day. Both of NH's senators, Ayotte and Shaheen, had co-sponsored PIPA but backed down hurridly last week, with Ayotte withdrawing support and Shaheen expressing suddenly discovered reservations.

The question, of course, is whether this indicates some sort of long-term shift in the geek world's relationship with Washington, at least on the question of copyright laws, or whether it was a one-time spasm that won't be replicated. The FBI's shutdown of Megaupload.com, a file-sharing behemoth, shows that the issue is far from settled, as the Washington Post notes.

The LA Times has a story taking the hometown business angle: "Hollywood regroups after losing battle"

To close with every editorial writer's favorite closing line: Only Time Will Tell.

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Old stuff (utility poles) is a problem with new stuff (broadband networks)

Posted by David Brooks    |    Thursday, January 19, 2012

When I wrote about continuing plans to bring broadband to parts of New Hampshire via the Network NH Now program (December story here), I concentrated on an aspect f the project that hadn't occurred to me: The lengthy, tedious process of figuring out where to put the fiber-optic cables on utility poles:

• “First we do a survey, walk the pole line with both utilities. We look at the pole, take measurements, engineers in the field decide on this one, power can move up, phone can move down, cable TV can be rearranged, whatever is needed, then you’ll have space.” Then the utilities have to go out and move their lines, often in a certain order, before the new ones can go on.

Sounds old-fashioned, doesn't it? Well, a debate over the question of who gets to go where on the utility pole is holding up Google's plans for high-speed broadband in Kansas City, as reported here by the Kansas City Star. From the story:

• Differences over where and how to hang wires on those poles, and what fees or installation costs may be required, have created a troublesome bump in plans to launch the project at “Google speed.” The issue was dealt with in just 60 words in Google’s original agreement, but nine-plus months later engineers and lawyers are still trying to settle on common ground.
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Mass. study finds that wind turbine noise is annoying, but no serious health hazard

Posted by David Brooks    |    Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection convened a panel of health experts to review existing medical literature about wind turbines. As the NY Times reports (here, subscription required), it found no evidence of any "wind turbine syndrome" caused by the particular vibrations associated with large turbines.

But the story notes that the noises produced by the spinning blades, particularly the extra noise produced by compressed air when a blade passes in front of the support column, is particularly annoying - partly because it is irregular in pacing, and partly because it often happens at night when other sounds are diminished.

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Scientists and movies - an obvious mix in Mass., why not in NH?

Posted by David Brooks    |    Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Bringing science to us unwashed masses is always a fun endeavor - tomorrow night's Science Cafe NH in Concord leaps to mind, but the Coolide Corner Theater in Cambridge, Mass., is doing it particularly well, pairing science talks with movies. From the Boston.com article:

• A state epidemiologist discussed science’s ability to handle new biological threats, an issue brought up by the 1971 film “The Andromeda Strain.’’ The executive director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute discussed advances in stem cell research in conjunction with “Sleeper,’’ the 1973 movie in which Woody Allen plays a health food store owner who ends up being frozen after an ulcer operation and wakes up 200 years later.

It's supported by grants from the foundations and science museums, and rightly so. Here's the story.

Wilton Town Hall Theater, the greatest movie theater in northern New England, has occasional movies-with-talks about social issues, and monthly showing of silent movies with live music. Hmmm ... maybe it would like a GraniteGeek movie night?

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House kills SOPA, the online piracy bill that techies hate, although a Senate version still lives

Posted by David Brooks    |    Monday, January 16, 2012

Wikipedia's logo today

UPDATE: Wikipedia's English-language site is going ahead with anti-SOPA plans, and will "go dark" all Wednesday as part of widespread protest. That will raise alot more attention than the fact that, say, Reddit and Boing-Boing are going dark. Maybe GraniteGeek should, too? Here are the details.

The U.S. House of Representatives has effectively killed the Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA, which is despised by many tech folks (including our own Dyn Inc., as I noted in a recent column) as being an innovation-killer that will throttle much of the Net.

As this article notes, however, a Senate version called PIPA is still alive.

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If copper is a lure to thieves, maybe cables should have less copper

Posted by David Brooks    |    Monday, January 16, 2012

Every week The Telegraph has a story or two about people stealing copper wire or cable (like this one). The problem, fueled by the high cost of copper, is so widespread that some say it's a threat to increased broadband deployment.

Slashdot has a report about a company that says it can replace much of the copper in cables with steel, making "a steel core bonded to a copper outer casing, forming an equally effective but far less valuable cable by exploiting the corrosion-resistance of copper with the conductive properties of steel." Sometimes crime is an incentive to innovation, too.

Here's the Slashdot piece, full of meaty links.

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Does burning wood for heat and power make sense in the 21st Century? Come to Science Cafe and discuss

Posted by David Brooks    |    Monday, January 16, 2012

The latest Science Cafe New Hampshire is this Wednesday, Jan. 18 (7 p.m., The Barley House restaurant in Concord), and will discuss Biomass Energy - e.g., whether and how it makes sense to burn wood for heat and power in this modern age. More details here.

We have four panelists this time - two in the wood-pellet industry, two from the forestry side - so we can chew over questions about cost, pollution, local jobs, how to sustain forest, etc.

Two hours of good food, good drink, intelligent discussion, and it's free - what more could you want? See you there.

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Email insults rain down on speaker at climate-change conference in NH

Posted by David Brooks    |    Sunday, January 15, 2012

A climate-change conference held last month in Portsmouth that had a political tinge - it included Republican lawmakers and scientists who urged their party to stop hiding from the fact that we're altering our climate in complex ways - has produced a lot of online invective against one participant.

In a story at Presstv.com (read it here), MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel says he has been flooded with nasty emails as part of what appears to be a loosely orchestrated attack because a video of his talk at the conference has appeared online. From the story:

The video - “New Hampshire's GOP Climate Hawks” - documented a climate change conference run by a group of Republican voters upset by their party's anti-science rhetoric. Kerry Emanuel was a keynote speaker along with former Republican congressman Bob Inglis from South Carolina (who, incidentally, has not received any threats since the video.)

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"The Sound of Music" - with FIRST robotics

Posted by David Brooks    |    Saturday, January 14, 2012

Tonight is the annual comedy night fund-raiser for the Souhegan High School FIRST Robotics team. For half a dozen years I have written the skit that kids put on before the comedians - it's fun, in a stressful way, which is why I stick with it even though my FIRST-ing son is halfway through college.

The 10-minute skit is a sort of parody of "The Sound of Music," in that we recite versions of a few songs with FIRST-appropriate lyrics, a la Mad Magazine. Here's our version of do-re-mi:

Team: DOUGH is what we need so we - can

PAY to make the robot spin

Robot: ME, I'm the point I have to go

FAR, so contests we will win

Team: SO, we have to work on him.

Robot: LA! I sing while my parts grow

Team: TEA, sold at intermission

ALL: Which brings us back to DOUGH

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Old dog (well, old-ish) learns new tricks: The surprising pleasure of an e-reader

Posted by Earle Rich    |    Friday, January 13, 2012

I’m usually cautious about new technology, preferring to hop on the wagon after the first few users have experienced the bleeding edge and cured the inevitable glitches of a new, 1.0 release of software or hardware.

My daughter gave me a Nook Color reader for Christmas. This is something I would probably never have purchased, telling myself that I liked books, the smell of a new book, the crackle of the spine when freshly opened and the crisp typography and pictures. Why would I need an electronic book, a pale imitation of the real thing. Still, I was curious but had never seen one in use other than those kiosks at Staples or Office Depot.

Now I have one and my life is changed. I’ve downloaded several books from Barnes & Noble, many free ones from Project Gutenberg and their Science Fiction section.
http://www.gutenberg.org/

I subscribe to many magazines and included with the dead tree version is a way to also download the digital version which comes out earlier than the postal service delivery. So, Wired, Home Power and Make Magazine are now in the digital memory, accessible whenever I want, without searching through the piles of the other magazines I get.

Reading on the tablet is really different. When I bring up a magazine page, the entire page is shown with the photos and type too small to be useful. With a two finger swipe, I can expand any part of the page to whatever size I want. As we get older, this is an especially useful feature since I’ve been known to use a magnifier to examine details in a photo of some gadget I’m interested in. Being nearsighted, I can take my glasses off and enjoy another freedom, especially when reading in bed.
I’m a photographer. The way I share my photos is to provide a link to my Flickr site where people who are so inclined can click on and view my photos. www.flickr.com/photos/mvfotog/sets But when I want to share photos of the grandkid or of our activities, the need to log on is pretty inconvenient. Now, I can match the brags of other grandparents as they bring out their printed photos by bring out the Nook and running a slide show in glorious color. I’m pretty impressed by the color rendition of the little 7 inch screen. Small enough to be portable but big enough to show detail. And again, the two finger swipe to enlarge any part of the photo is a nice feature.

The memory included in these tablets can hold an impressive number of books. The 10 gig or so available plus the 16 gig card I installed can hold about 26,000 books. Magazines or content with color photos take up more room but still, holding this little tablet that can probably hold more reading than our local library is staggering. I travel a lot and eliminating the need to carry lots of books with me is really liberating.

I don’t have many apps. I have plenty of good reading to waste time on games (except for a really good Sudoku game, does that count?). There are still plenty of uses that I haven’t explored. I have friends that have Kindles and I’ve been impressed with that device as well. The main subject I’m discussing here is that electronic books are here and are useful.

I can’t ask for much more than that. My daughter did a good thing giving me this non-trivial gift. Much better than the consumables we usually ask for, being old enough to have all the ‘stuff’ we need. She said she held off until the electronic readers were good enough. She was right.

Earle Rich Mont Vernon, NH

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