T.J. Schmitz.com » T.J. Schmitz

Power-hungry PCs cost users

T.J. Schmitz — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:56:00 +0000

The BBC reports on the cost of not shutting computers off when not in use – “”Most people could easily save £100 a year and a small-to-medium sized company should easily cut £5,000 off its bills just by following our advice,” said Mr Ross.” For those of us in the US, that’s $9170. Our Middle School had a big lights off and computer off campaign a year or so ago, and saved over $10,000. Not bad for a few seconds of work each day.

HP sues ink refillers

T.J. Schmitz — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 11:30:00 +0000

News.com reports on the HP lawsuits against Rhinotek and InkCycle. Looks like now HP is just using it’s patent arsenal to force refillers to list their cartridges as “used” and “refilled” – which only seems fair, as it allows consumers to make an educated comparison. I just hope it’s not foreshadowing of bigger and more sinister things to come, as HP holds 4,000 patents related consumable supplies such as ink and cartridges.

self-replicating rapid prototyper with a twist

T.J. Schmitz — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:55:00 +0000

Interesting story about a refrigerator-sized machine that would make “household items and gadgets, including kitchenware, cameras and even small musical instruments” out of metal or plastic. The cool thing, is that it would be able to make copies of itself – making it self replicating, and enable to original purchasers to defray the cost of thier machine by selling copies of it. This would be possible, because the RepRap project leader Dr Adrian Bowyer is not taking out a patent and will not charge a licence fee. “The most interesting part of this is that we’re going to give it away,” he said. It could be an interesting and revolutionary change in the way we manufacture things.

Software Streaming

T.J. Schmitz — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 20:26:00 +0000

Network World has an interesting article on Software Streaming that caught my interest. It sounds like they are describing a product similar to Apple’s NetBoot, which I’ve Seen in action at CCC. The article however is very sparse on details – a lot of theory, but no actual how-to’s or off the shelf software to accomplish it.

I’ve seen similar concepts, like the formentioned Apple NetBoot, and LTSP for Linux clients, but haven’t seen this done since the windows 98 days for a Microsoft product. Searching revealed two major suppliers of this technology: Bootix (250 euros/license) and Qualsystem (99 euros/license).

An interesting concept, and it would be interesting to see how it compares to a Windows Terminal Server or a Citrix solution – both in price and performance.

Invisibility?

T.J. Schmitz — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 01:47:00 +0000

Scientists have discovered that Plasmons can be used to make very small items invisible. From the article:

The proposal involves using plasmons — tiny electronic excitations on the surfaces of some metals — to cancel out the visible light or other radiation coming from an object.

“A proper design … may induce a dramatic drop in the scattering cross-section, making the object nearly invisible to an observer,” Nader and Alu write in a scientific paper that was made available to the public Feb. 14.

But cloaking ability would depend on an object’s size, so that only with very small things — items that are already microscopic or nearly so — could the visible light be rendered null. A human could be made impossible to detect in longer-wavelength radiation such as microwaves, but not from visible light.

So, don’t go planning on a Harry Potter invisibility cloak just yet…

Sony DVD Direct burns DVDs without a computer

T.J. Schmitz — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:15:00 +0000

I found this device interesting, as I just bought an external dual-layer DVD burner for about $100 less than this and a standalone DVD recorder for about $300… so if I had picked this up instead, I would have saved $200….. and gotten the same functionality.

Paris Hilton & You

T.J. Schmitz — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 20:01:00 +0000

Frank Hayes has a great article in this week’s ComputerWorld on how the Paris Hilton hack should get IT thinking about the use of state-of-ther art cell phones. Once again, do you really want your sensitive information out of your hands – or better yet, as the article asks: “you don’t realy want to end up like Paris Hilton, do you?”.

T-Mobile Hack Used Known Hole

T.J. Schmitz — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 17:46:00 +0000

Wired reports that the method Nicolas Jacobsen used to gain access to T-Mobile accounts was through a known hole in their WebLogic server – for which BEA had a patch available.

This however didn’t make Jacobsen a ‘script kiddie’ – he ended up writing his own custom interface to their customer database.

Another good example of the need to keep those systems patched!

Microsoft and Cisco aiming to bring more girls to IT

T.J. Schmitz — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 01:07:00 +0000

It caught my eye that there were two different articles about major IT companies aiming to bring girls into IT this week.

eSchool News reports on Cisco’s efforts to make IT, and in particular, their Tech Academy more appealing to girls. One of the interesting points of the article is that research shows girls are more interested in to learning about technology in the context of “broader social issues.”

IT World Canada reports on Microsoft (Canada)’s participation in the Explore IT Conference – aims at interesting 9th grade girls in IT. Lasha Dekker, vice-president of developer and platform evangelism for Microsoft Canada Co., was a keynote speaker and debunked myths such as: fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social.

It’s great to hear that effort and progress is being made in this front. I’ve got a 6th grade daughter who’s life ambition is to work at Pixar, and it would be great for her to not have stigma attached to working in IT. As far as the geeky thing though, I’m afraid she’s out of luck – she just joined her school’s D&D club and qualified for our regional spelling bee. The geekiness won’t be going away anytime soon, and I suspect it just might be genetic.

P.S. – Steve Jobs, if you’re reading this drop me a line – she might be a good candidate for grooming as replacement CEO in a couple of years!

Password Complexity

T.J. Schmitz — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:50:00 +0000

There must be something in the water cooler over at Information Week, because I think this week’s Secret CIO column is right on the money, and I usually disagree with him, or skip the column because it’s just whining about corporate politics.

He talks about the commons sense that short password expiration times, combined with prohibiting re-suing of a large number of passwords just forces people to write them down – with a net loss of security. It’s perfect timing for me, as we’re currently reviewing our own password policy, and this is perfect reinforcement for not making it too draconian.