Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Homer, that’s your solution to everything: to move under the sea. It’s not going to happen!

Published
by
Sam
on January 30, 2009
in 930posts
. 3 Comments

Back in the day, there was a little show called seaQuest DSV. I watched some of it as a kid, and now I’m revisiting the series curtousey of Netflix. The show had a decent premise and a good budget, and it got me excited about science fiction as a kid.

The story is set in the year 2018, when much of the worlds ocean floors have been colonized. Now I know you’re thinking, “Who colonized the oceans? And why?” Farmers, that’s who. To farm what, I really couldn’t tell you. Does it matter? No!

But wait, there somebody else in the water… pirates! That’s right. Pirates. In submarines. Looking and acting like Nazis. And trying to kill the farmers.

That’s where the UEO—the United Earth Oceans Organization—steps in. Their flagship is the seaQuest (yes, the capitalization is correct), a giant ass submarine with hundreds of crewmen. Its job is to protect the farmers from the pirates, the pirates from the monsters, and the farmers from themselves (they do live at the bottom of the ocean). While technically a military vessel, half of seaQuest’s crew are scientists who have a grand old time conductin’ their speriments.

I shit you not people, this show is a classic. Here are some other cool facets of the show:

  • A talking dolphin
  • Roy Scheider
  • Military vs science ideological struggles
  • Holograms via misty waterfalls
  • These two ladies
  • Pirates in submarines

I also noticed something interesting about science fiction television. During the first episode of the show, the previous captain of seaQuest, a woman, was relieved of command for being an evil bitch. She then died trying to blow up seaQuest at the end of the episode. In another show, Battlestar Galactica, Admiral Cain is also an evil bitch. The one woman I can think of in a position of authority who was not an evil bitch was Captain Janeway. Well, at least she wasn’t evil. Why do I bring this up? I like to think that science fiction is a reflection of our own society. I will say no more. And yes, I can totally draw conclusions from a sample size of three.

Anyways, the show has some pretty cool ideas about the future and where technology is going. But it gets computers totally wrong. Why it even tries to explain how computers work I’ll never know. Star Trek never tried to do this. BSG never does this. The writers on these shows knew they wouldn’t get it right, so they didn’t try. But the writers on seaQuest had some balls. Take this conversation:

“What’s wrong with the computer?”

“It’s the core. It’s dying. There’s a virus eating away at it.”

“Can you get rid of it?”

“I don’t know. Depending on the layers of data between us and the virus, it might be doable. Woah”

“What?”

“Dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“Dogs. Barking dogs. They protect the virus if someone tries to remove it. I can’t get near it or else it will take the whole system down.”

Then they proceed to go “around” the virus by cutting and rewiring a bunch of cables inside the ship (which leak some kind of goo).

Overall, seaQuest is a decent show. The stories and characters are silly, but the idea is pretty cool. Think Star Trek under the sea.

7/10

My current mood:

Published
by
Edwin
on January 28, 2009
in 930posts
. 0 Comments

OpenDNS: The underqualified IT employee’s nightmare

Published
by
Sam
on January 25, 2009
in 930posts
. 3 Comments

With all the recent talk about DNS vulnerabilities out on the interwebs, I decided it was time to start using OpenDNS. I must say, the service is pretty cool. Basically, you point your DNS requests to their IP address, and all requests go through their DNS servers. They collects stats for your network, and they even can filter your traffic based on your criteria. You can even manage multiple networks with one account, like, say, your main house, and then a vacation house in the Poconos.

While this doesn’t serve any real purpose in Casa de Samuel, it would be extremely useful for a family with kids, or a small to medium sized business. This is especially true because of the filtering. There is no software to install, no hardware to maintain, and no employees to pay.

This leads me to a question for all small to medium-sized business: WHY ARE YOU NOT USING THIS? You don’t have to pay for expensive software or hardware, and you don’t have to hire some half-wit with a “technical” degree. OpenDNS does all the work for you. Sure, they probably charge some fee, but what you get out of it is worth it.

As for you enterprises and government: OpenDNS might just be the perfect solution for you, too. You are the ones obsessed with filtering/monitoring/mindrape. You can do all of those things for much less and much more smoothly. That goes for you, too, NMCI.

Actually, you know who needs OpenDNS the most? Who has the worst IT equipment? Who has the by-God, absolutely, without-a-doubt worst IT employees? Public schools. They, coincidentally, have the greatest filtering needs. No one wants little Timmy bringing up a pr0n site in the school library.

So all you CTOs and CIOs out there, please take a look at OpenDNS and stop the IT insanity.

Approximately 3,720 to One…

Published
by
Joel
on January 14, 2009
in 930posts and Tips and Tutorials
. 1 Comment

Out of the graciousness of my heart (and the promise of brownies), I decided to help some friends of mine  with some probability work for their stats class. Since a few of them play cards, I decided to use poker as an analogy (and the chance to maybe win some petty cash). As we were teaching the non-poker players the various winning hands, I heard one of them ask what the chances of getting a Royal Flush was and to my astonishment one of the poker players responded “Like a million to one”.

WRONG

So I decided to give them a crash course in counting cards. Not counting cards as in the get yourself arrested for being an idiot in Vegas, but counting cards as in the probability of certain hands occurring given 52 cards. Before we can start, I’ve got a few quick notes for you. A deck has 52 cards divided into 4 suits (Hears, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades) and each suit has 13 ranks (Ace, 2-10, Jack, Queen, King). Finally, instead of the standard mathematical combination notation I’m going to use (n,k) or n choose k. If you’re not sure what a combination is, Wikipedia has a decent article.

Royal Flush: probably the easiest to figure out. There are 4 suits giving us 4 Royal Flushes total.

Continue reading ‘Approximately 3,720 to One…’

Honeymoons are awesome; I should get married more often

Published
by
Sam
on January 2, 2009
in 930posts
. 0 Comments

So I’m on the last day of my honeymoon. We took the train down to Miami, spent three days there, then went on a cruise to the Bahamas. Here are some things that are awesome about cruises:

  • Unlimited food
  • Unlimited ice cream
  • Unlimited loss of money

Okay, so that last one isn’t so awesome. But I do have good news: my credit card limit is only $13,000. Also, my equilibrium is so out of whack that my hotel room is rocking back and forth. Fun stuff.

Anyways, I know the readers of Sector 930—who, coincidentally, are also the authors—probably don’t give a crap about my honeymoon. A subject they care more about would be the science fiction short story I read on the cruise. I found it in the ship’s library. The science fiction selection was scant, but I found A Meeting with Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke (joined in a two-fer with Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I have just found out is the second book in this trilogy (I didn’t read it)).

I also found a collection of short stories in a book called Worlds to Come, published in 1967. It had some stories by Clarke, Bradbury, and others. I didn’t read it.

About Medusa, it starts out with a guy named Commander Falcon. As soon as the image in my head looked less like Captain Falcon and more like a real person, I could read the rest of the story.

That involved a giant, 0.5 km long airship in its final test flight before being opened as a cruise ship. It was full of awesome things like super smart chimpanzee assistants and giant gas balls. It was totally awesome because it was a cruise ship, and I also happened to be on a cruise ship. It also reminded me that we did not have any super chimps.

But then a horrible accident happened and the ship crashed and Commander Falcon was crushed and torn to pieces and then was put back together as a cyborg. While I admit the fact that Commander Falcon was a cyborg was kind of awesome, the fact that the cruise ship crashed in a ball of flame and all the chimps died was kind of not awesome, especially because I was on a cruise ship.

The rest of the story was about Falcon’s trip through the atmosphere of Jupiter in a giant balloon seven years later, blah, blah, blah.

I also finished So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and now I only have Mostly Harmless left to read. I’ve been reading this series off and on (mostly off*) for about 8 years!

The point of this story is: thank you all for being a part of my wedding. It meant a lot to me. I love you all. Also, I love you Kristin, and thank you for letting me write a blog post on the last day of our honeymoon.

For those interested, the previously mentioned books are on this guy’s lists:

*Did you see what I did there? I’m so clever!