Hey, something seems wonky there

Why Bush's visit to Southern California is a bad thing

Wonkifier — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:07:00 GMT

President Bush is coming to visit Southern California this Thursday in order to see the damage from the fires. He is expected to deliver news of federal aid, talk to some of the local citizens, firefighters, and politicians.

Unfortunately, whereever he flies, there is a T.F.R (Temporary Flight Restriction) grounding all traffic within 60 miles of his plane.

If he lands pretty much anywhere in Southern California, firefighting air traffic is effectively stopped from being able to do water drops while he's in the air. (That's around 7.2 million acres around him)

While he's on the ground, the TFR shrinks, but will still have an effect.

Please Mr. Bush, do a broadcast and explain why you want to protect the thing we need most... Air based fire fighting.

USB 3.0 to increase theorietical speeds 10x, ouch!

Wonkifier — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:06:00 GMT

This Crave article tells of USB 3.0, which they report should show up in systems in 2009 or 2010.

Since it will include Fiber as well as the traditional copper, it will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but will also be able to speed data along at a theoretical 4.8Gbps.

Keep in mind this is theoretical. (see this article about why USB 2.0 at 480Mbps is theoritically faster than Firewire at 400Mbps, but in reality doesn't tend to perform that way)

Your computer has to do all the work in managing that transfer, so while your system might be busy keeping a USB 2.0 device fed, it will have to be many times busier to keep a USB 3.0 device fed.

Systems are not going to increase their overall speeds by a factor of 10 in the next two years, so expect to see system performance drop as a result.

On the plus side, while your system is working harder to move that data, it will move faster, so you won't have an impact for quite as long.

We've already got Network cards offloading processing for various networking related tasks, how much longer will it be
before someone builds a USB co-processor? (which would kind of make it like the firewire devices... a processor for each device, it just happens to be on the other end of the cable)

Stargate SG-1 Theme song Lyrics

Wonkifier — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:58:00 GMT

I always got the Stargate SG-1 DVDs as soon as they came out, but I finally started catching up on going through all the bonus material.

On the 5th Season DVD, in the directors commentary, Peter Deluise made up the following lyrics.

Stargate,
It’s a great big world...
With a great big swirl
    that you step inside
        to another world.

We’re talkin Stargate,
It’s a crazy trip,
You can go quite far
    and you don’t need a car
        or even a ship.

There’s Colonel O’Neill and Carter and Daniel and Teal’c.

Look out for that Goa’uld.

Someone captured it over on Google Video: SG-1 Theme song lyrics sung

Dorky but Awesome!

Subnet cheatsheets

Wonkifier — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:05:00 GMT

When studying TCP/IP networking (specifically v4), I can't even begin to count how often I had to answer questions like

Which of the following IP addresses are on the 10.3.103.128/28 subnet:

10.3.103.127
10.3.103.131
10.3.104.244
10.3.103.144

I have attached two versions of the cheat sheet that I used to get through some of the most annoying practice exercises.

Fortunately, because of the way the data is laid out, if you use it enough, you won't need to refer to the sheet anymore. Also, because its structure clearly shows the patterns that show up in powers of two, you can quickly reproduce the necessary portions during certification exams, so you can spend time thinking about the real problems, and not getting stuck in bitwise arithmetic.

The first file is a one page version of the sheet, meant to be printed out and kept in a notebook.

The second file is a two page version. It is means to be printed out on two sides of a CD label sized piece of paper. It can easily be kept in an emergency CD kit that many admins keep on hand.

Referring to the example above, and using the 2 page version of the cheat sheet:

First, notice that we're dealin with a /28 nework.

Looking at the legend on the bottom of the sheet, we see that a /28 covers half of a single column.
And since /28 is in the fourth column, it represents the fourth octet of an IPv4 address.

So, we flip to the back side of the cheat sheet, and see the top half of the first column (in yellow) represents all the octets that would fit... 10.3.103.128-10.3.103.143.

So, working through the examples is very simple

No. Outside the range, so not same subnet.
Yes. Inside range, same subnet.
No. Since we're looking at fourth octet, the first three must match, and they don't.
No. Just outside the range.

Need to find out if 10.4.100.4 and 10.4.101.33 are on the same /21?
Looking at the legend, we see that the third octets must live within the same "quarter column", in this case the non-bolded numbers that are in the top of the last column on the front side.
10.4.97.xx-10.4.112.xx are on the same /21, so the answer is yes.

As a bonus, I've built in a Hex and Binary table as well as a subnet mask reference.

Feel free to enjoy.

Single page cheat sheet

Two page CD-Sized cheat sheet

Usual copyright stuff applies... that is, if you're using this for yourself, go ahead. If you you want to include it with a collection, distribute copies to your department, duplicate it and charge for it, etc. please contact me first at copier@wonkified.net.

Is God capable of sacrifice?

Wonkifier — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 02:16:00 GMT

Everlasting life
I grew up, as most Americans arguably have, with John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

Christ is the son of God. Check.
God sacrificed his son to wipe away all our sins. Check.
Because of that we get to live forever, as long as we are saved. Check.

This is sounding like a pretty good deal so far. God loves us so much that he gave up his only son for to allow us to live eternally.

How good a deal is this?
Throughout history, countless fathers have given up their sons for one reason or another. (slavery, expansionism, freedom, etc) So, this is a sacrifice we can relate to. It sounds really really serious, so the benefit we draw from it gets some credibility.

He "gave" his Son. It was the ultimate sacrifice.

He's obviously pretty serious about Salvation.

But God didn't give up anything.
God got his son back three days later.

How much of a sacrifice is that? "I and my son both live eternally, and I gave up a long weekend with him. That should show you how much I love you all." Honestly, that just doesn't seem all that magnanimous.

And God is not even capable of sacrifice...
To sacrifice something is to give it up, to not have it anymore, and not be able to replace it.

God can make other Sons if He wishes.

"For I so loved the world that I clipped my fingernails." It just doesn't have the same ring to it, but it would presumably take about as much effort for God to create a new Son if He so desired.

The end result?

If we believe that He gave up His Son, we get to live forever; but he's incapable of giving up his son.
If the sacrifice on His side doesn't happen, does that mean that the benefit on our side can't happen either?

It's a tad disturbing.