Comic 27

2/21/2008

Comic 26

2/20/2008

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ADSENSE
Dont mind it, it is just motivation.

Data

I have been trying to devise a way to make a physical medium to store digital information that would be able to last for several hundred if not thousand years. Not only would it be storage but it would also have a way to be readable on any technology through time. In order to do this you would need a material that wouldn't degrade and would be extremely durable. New technologies are paving a way for a picture to last for an extremely long time but what do you do when you have thousand of photos and having them indivuadly etchen in to very expensive materail wouldn't be feesable. Also what about documents, code, songs and so many other things.... For example if you were trying to retrieve some data off a hard drive that was 20 years old; lets pretend that the drive still works and by some miracle the data is intact; now find a way to get the data off of it, there is no computer on the market today that would come with a connection of that type, almost no retailer would have anything that would make this possible, nothing short of a data recovery center pf some sort would be capable of this. In the end it would probably cost several thousand dollars to get the 2kb file off of it.

Now lets jump ahead 10 years, now get the data off, it would be ten times as hard and cost ten times as much. Now on a more present day tone, you buy an external drive to back up your data, save your pictures and stuff. Now there is two main ways this could go 1) You save everything to it and forget it, it probaly will sit in a box somewhere for several years and the drive could probabaly last about 5-7 years if you are lucky 2) You put everything on the drive and use it all the time, adding stuff general backup, data transfers and the such, this drive will maybe last 2 years maybe.

As we progress the way we store information becomes more and more condensed and fragile. Look at time we began with simple cave drawings that have lasted 10's of thousands of years then to paper that lasts in the hundreds of years, then to digital storage, sure we can store a million times as much in the same amount of space but it will only last a tenth as long. Some may argue that we could just keep on copying the data over and over again but you lose a little each time you do this and soon you have nothing left. As an example take an empty glass then take an identical glass filled with water, now pour the water into the empty glass over and over again, how many times were you able to do this before there wasn't anything left. Now pretend that was a file of several thousand family pictures. How many of those pictures would you have left in 20 years. I would say none.

Think of things that have been copied over and over again over a very long time and think of how they have changed. Lets say as an example... the bible, it is over three thousands years old, mainly written on paper which only lasts a short amount of time, has been copied millions of times, been converted into hundreds of languages and has been subject to the events of time.. Do you really think that it is the same as it was when it was first conceived. You would have to be a complete idiot to think so. I believe that is nearly impossible to comprehend how much it has changed. It is saddening to think that most of the world operates according to this book. Now this brings up another issue, how many file formats, programming languages, operating systems, software, code and the like is there. How many of these things will be readable in ten years, how about twenty or thirty. I dare you to take a flash drive, save an image of yourself to it as a jpg and put it in a safe place pull it out in in a couple of decades. That image disappeared the very second that you set it aside for that time. The worlds history, economy and social records all rely on the very same idea of that flash drive. It is unimaginable what effect that this could have... These things fuel my desire to create a universal language and physical medium to store the worlds information on. But really in a couple of hundred years who will care about who won the cival war, who Einstein was or what you face looked like.

Hmmm.. Maybe if more people were posting...

Maybe some other people should post too, then we might have more that four subscribers to the feed ;)

Forums & RF

I love going to forums and coming across a quick thing about someone talking about an antenna, wifi or something like that be cause it always turns in to an argument.. Heres an example... It is of an instructable on making a cheap antenna if you read through the comments you will see the argument begin and soon no one is discussing the original topic it is just a series of long comments describing the physics of RF ah good times, good times........

3G + Dentist = this Post

I have to go to the dentist for them to fix something.... Anyway my speakers arrived an hour ago so more on that later when I can use a keyboard.

Disc 10

Ok, I'm on disc 10. Hopefully I didn't screw up.....................

Bored...

Today has been very unproductive, due in part to my laziness. I have though been backing up my computer using acronis. I am backing up a total of 80 gigs to dvds, about 80% done and I'm on the 9th disk... If someone would like to donate moneyz or an external drive for a birthday present I would officially name you one of the coolest people on the planet. No the universe. Anyway to the three other people reading this, what are you guys doing today? Okay I'm off to work.

Useless Computers

Okay check out UC. I am adding stuff right now like custom eee pc's and htpc's. Also check out the stuff that is already on there. Ok I am done, now unfortunately the only people reading this already know about useless computers... BTW these computers are far from useless.

Comic 24

2/7/2008

Morning world! Or should I say, Hello World! :)
Due to technical diffulcties, the last line had several errors and (bane of banes) an emoticon. Please ignore this lapse in grammar and other language conventions. It might happen again, and if it does, THAN T3H L0LCATZ MADE M3 DO IT!!!!!11ELEVEN.

Revenge of the Homework... Again.

Because I am evil. All I have to do is my NRM thing and my math and Polisci reading. So first, NRM. That will be a good place to start since I'm already online. For NRM I have an article write-up, the exact details of which I totally forget. So I'll be right back, after I grab the assignment. Ok, the damage is this: 2 pages of summary, which includes the topic/summary or the article, high points of the article, and my response. Time to hit the bathroom then start wasting away from lack of sleep.
Now to stop wasting any more time and actually get down to the assignment. The article I would like to use for it is a thing on RFID tags from the February 008 Scientific American. First, a summary. By which I mean, find the text on sciam's website and copying and pasting. Oh... did I say that out loud? :)

OK... Ctrl-V now.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, an electronic alternative to bar codes, are becoming increasingly common. They mark shipping pallets and library books, for example, and are key to remote toll-paying systems.
Hitachi, which already produces a tiny chip for use in such tags, has announced a prototype for an almost invisible chip.
The company intends for the new chip to be incorporated into high-value vouchers such as gift certificates, tickets and securities to thwart counterfeiters.

Now to make that my own.

I chose to write on something I have a personal interest in, Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags. They are commonly being used as an "electronic alternative" to UPC (barcodes), and are now being found everywhere. According to wikipedia.com, it "cost[s] about US$0.005 to implement a barcode compared to passive RFID which still costs about US$0.07 to US$0.30 per tag." Still, they can be found all over, in library books and shipping pallets. They are necessary for remote toll paying systems (ie. FasTrak, that thing on the Golden Gate).
I usually try to avoid anything looking like definitions in my papers, but there is no easy way around it with RFID. It is modern (almost futuristic) technology and incredibly complex. Basically, there are a few components necessary for RFID. First, the "tags" as they're called. There are two types of tags, passive tags and active tags. The major difference is that active tags have a battery, more on this in a bit. The main part of the tag is some Read-Only Memory (ROM) that contains an "immutable identification number." The rest of the circuitry is to connect to a reader. Which leads to the next part, the reader. The reader, depending on what type chips it is looking for, scans for a tag and then sends the number the tag contains to a computer, which can then use the number as is fit. It is a little more complex than that, but that is the short version, which seems to have taken up near half a page. So, back to the article.
Hitachi, which already produces the tiny chip for use in RFID tags, has announced a prototype for an almost invisible chip. Tag size is limited by how small the chip can get. For example, the chip in a current library tag measures 1mm by 1mm by 0.18mm. Tiny, no? Well, Hitachi's new "powder" chip measures a minuscule 0.05mm by 0.5mm by 0.005mm. The chip is almost invisible to the naked eye, and can actually be embedded into a sheet of paper. The article then goes into some detail about how Hitachi is trying to make their powder chips, and faster and cheaper than the current large chips.
So what is so important about all this? Primo, it is really awesome that a multi-digit code can be transferred wirelessly from a distance. It could be embedded in sidewalks to aid wheelchair navigation programs. It could be built in to each and every sheet of paper, making inventorying almost instantaneous. There are about as many uses for RFID as there are grains of sand on the third monkey to the left from the wildebeest. Secondus, there are the privacy concerns. This is my personal favorite part, because I love arguing, and there is nothing to get a good argument going like questioning someone's right to privacy. I am a big proponent of keeping private things, well, private. RFID tags are likely to go into everything if it becomes cheap enough. How would you like it if someone were able to walk up to you with a little homebuilt RFID scanner, scan the clothes you are wearing, and find out you paid too much for those pants because they were the "stressed" (or whatever) pair from Abercrombie and you cared too much about your so-called "image" to go down to Goodwill and by a pair of slightly worn jeans. Oh, and grab the number of the credit card you used to pay with and then the Social Security Number linked to the card, then your date of birth, then walk over to you and say "Cool, you're over 21 and I love the Aber(whatever) pants, lets go get a drink at a bar." Then pays with your credit card and then goes on a shopping spree and then starts collecting unemployment under your name. I'm not paranoid, I just have an active imagination, and understand that everything I just listed there could be possible. Be afraid. Be very... Ha. Tertius, it could be used to prevent counterfeiting. If every bill over say five dollars had a little tag in it, that was registered in a national database, it would be pretty hard to copy (read: nearly impossible).
So at the possible expense of some privacy, we have a pretty beneficial piece of technology that could make everything from warehouses to coffee mugs to money more secure. Personally, I think Hitachi can take their powder and snort it, I would prefer to have my privacy.

Shelby Munsch
aka JESUS IM TIRED
only with more betters grammer

Blogs and the comic

And the blog is moving forward!! We are actually putting posts up here, like the blog was made for! That's good to know, and hopefully it continues to happen.
About the comic: there was no comic yesterday, and I think there will not be a comic on Tuesdays any more. I am just way to busy (it has nothing to do with laziness, I swear!!) to make three comics per week. And Tuesday is the best day to drop because, on a normal Tuesday, I'm home about 30 minutes in which I'm not asleep. I have to eat dinner sometime! So, from now on, 2 comics per week, and I will try to remember to post them on the blog after I upload them.

Comic 23

2/6/2008

Ninjas Vs. Pirates

On any given day Ninjas are better than pirates at a ratio of 15,001^3:1, yeah that huge.

Just wondering......

How many people are reading this blog?(leave comment below to establish how awesome you are because you came here) Also curious as to weather anybody likes the idea of a cheap small slate tablet that is under 500 bucks, a bit larger than a half sheet of printer paper and it could play games like WOW(ew[imo]). Again leave a comment below to tell me that I am retarded or that the slate is a good idea, preferably the later. And Shelby, you don't get don't comment, unless it is constructive and I don't mean constructive criticism either.

Time to post on the blog again. I have to keep at least this one short, since I have my Environmental Conservation class at 1030. So yeah. Today my life is going crazy. Heh. I want to go snowboarding next week, so I need to do all the homework that will be due then by this Thursday. Luckily Cisco will not be in session, but I still have homework for Math 27 (Precalc) and Env. Conv. and Polisci 1 (Government).

So this is my first post on the blog. Except for the first comic. I think all the posts I write will be made from Writer. (begin endorsement)I personally endorse this -Jesus(/endorsement) If you don't know what that is, imagine you were writing on an old computer. And the only things you could do were write and... well, write. No formatting, just letters on a screen. That's basically the idea of it. Of course, you can save, and I just noticed a feature that lets one send it to Blogger, which is the system we are using.
So that's basically the idea of it. If you want, you can make an account (I made one because I want to use it on multiple computers), but you really don't have to. Check it out. It's at http://writer.bighugelabs.com/
Now, off that subject. On to bigger, not necessarily better things. The comic, mainly. So far most (read all but the two intro comics and the first one with the toast) have been written, organized and uploaded by Austin. The story ideas have been donated by all of us though. The current storyline, of the AI, is actually an idea I have been nursing for about... forever. Her name, Lady Aeris, is from the name I used for an imaginary friend of mine when I got all depressed-like when I was younger. I have always been into Artificial Intelligence, and kind of consider myself something of a transhumanist (look it up). For example, if anyone offered to throw some cyborg implants on whoever wanted some, I would be the first in line. Tangent: Is that a song? "The First in Line." Good name. /Tangent
So, to sum it up, blah blah blah. I wish I weren't so useless. Ha.

Comic 22

1/31/2008