TheJoey.Net

What’s wrong with this picture? Well besides some poor design decisions I’m seeing, let’s take a look at the main, in your face story. “WiFi: Children at risk from ‘electronic smog’.” What now? First of all, why is it just kids? Adults aren’t? O wait- This UK magaize, The Independant on Sunday, needs to sell the story. Not to mention, in the story I read on Engadget, it says the UK’s education department is also attacking WiFi, shutting them down in schools because of the apparent danger.

If there is a threat, I’d say it’s probably good that it’s being investigated. My fear, however, is that this will turn into another “Cell phones cause brain tumors” pandemic. And what good came from that? If there was an eminent threat, isn’t it possible that we would start seeing the effects in some people? WiFi has been around for a while now, and other devices that use the same frequencies as WiFI have been around much longer. But this story of course comes along with others proclaiming the ‘evils’ of WiFi. Did you hear Utah wants to criminalize unsecured [or open] WiFi networks?

According to another story on Engadget,

Utah lawmakers are considering “penalizing those who leave their wireless networks open” as they trial “various methods of quelling free speech controlling questionable internet content.”

This brings us to an important ethics question: Do we punish the person who is doing the action or the means by which they do it? There is a movement out there where people are not securing their WiFi networks as a sign of openness/freedom. And it should be my right to keep my WiFi open if I choose. For example, my Xbox 360 (for some odd reason), doesn’t really like WPA encryption. So I keep mine free for that reason (and a few others). Should I be punished as a criminal for that?

Utah lawmakers want to control questionable internet content. Does that mean they are going to limit what Internet users in Utah can view? That seems very Communist China. While I feel this probably won’t pass, it’s bad that states are thinking of taking legislation of this type seriously. It will become a slippery slope for everyone involves, especially the user. Don’t you agree?

posted on April 23rd, 2007 in Computer Stuff, Manifesto| No Comments »

I have been doing a lot of desktop publishing lately- Quark Xpress, Publisher, Photoshop for info graphics and the like. I’ve got to say it has been a nice change of pace from the normal coding sessions I have been doing the past few weeks. Once some of the stuff I have been working on is finalized I will add it to my Projects page. As much as I love coding, it’s been nice to do some design work lately. I can only take so many lines of PHP (and recently those lines have been hitting the thousands).

PS- Once I get time, I’ll be posting some of those projects too!

posted on March 22nd, 2007 in Computer Stuff, Design, Thoughts| No Comments »

Prey by Michael Crichton is a SciFi book that focuses on the possibilities of evolutionary programming and nano technology. Problems arise at a nano technology company call Xymos when they lose control of a nano particle swarm. Jack Foreman is called in to help. They used his genetic algorithm, PREDPREY, to program the swarm, and hoped he would be able to get it under control. When Jack arrives, he begins to find out that there is much more to the story than what he has been told. The swarm that has broken free is evolving and fast. They also seem to be reproducing. If they don’t do something fast, they are in a lot of trouble.

This book was appealing to me for two reasons: It’s a good story, and it goes pretty in depth about genetic algorithms, evolutionary programming, and programming in general. What we see in Prey seems pretty real, possible, and close to being done. Genetic Algorithms are something I have learned about in school and have started to program. Right from the beginning we start hearing about the kind of work that Jack does, and how he views the world, how he thinks, etc. This is a surprisingly accurate representation of the typical programmer. Crichton really did his research. The story also starts to pick up right at the beginning. Jack’s wife is a VP of Xymos, and has been working long hours lately. Her character has changed and he can’t put is finger on why. There is suspicion of cheating. Things start to get weird at home. That’s when Jack is called into Xymos, and goes against his wife’s wishes.

All in all, it’s a pretty fast read. The continued plot twists, surprises and frightening reality of it all makes it quite the page turner. And the references to programming don’t hurt either.

posted on February 10th, 2007 in Computer Stuff, Reviews| No Comments »

Recently (after I left school for Christmas, but before I got back on Jan. 2nd), all Adelphia customers were switched to Comcast’s service, as Adelphia was bought out by Comcast. From the time I got back, the internet was noticeably slower, but I thought at first it was my router, which has also been functioning incorrectly. However, I got the router situation resolved and my internet connection still blows. And it’s not just me.

My teachers have been complaining about service outages because they do not use the router issued by the company, and when Comcast says it’s fixed, it’s really not. My neighbors and friends have also been complaining about slower service, as well as all these people.

From the normal stuff I’ve been doing, I am downloading at ~30-50kbps, but have dipped as long as 10. Website loads take much longer than they should, and when I try remote access to my computer to stream music from it (post on that later), I have trouble. The image you see above took 15 seconds to upload. It’s an 8KB image. But don’t worry. I don’t have important things to do like develop websites, write reports, do projects, or 100 other things that require a decent internet connection. One that I happen to be paying for.

I am in Scranton, PA having these problems. If you are here too, I would recommend switching to Verizon if possible. I am not sure where Comcast covers, but is anyone else having trouble with the service?

posted on January 30th, 2007 in Business, Computer Stuff, Manifesto| | show comments » « hide comments

Backing up data (or the lack there of) seems to be a pretty big problem among college students, or just PC users in general. My most recent computer, the Gateway, tanked on me a few weeks ago. After some tinkering, I diagnosed it as a hard drive problem, and prayed I didn’t lose my data. Luckily, it was recoverable. However, not all that much was on the line because of my back ups.

Admittedly, I do not back up as often as a should. However, I do back up more than most. And I get a lot of, “What should I do to back up my stuff?” Honestly, backing up is just copying your documents somewhere else. Having a second copy of them. There are procedures you can do; but a simply copy and paste somewhere, like a CD or flash drive, will do the trick for the important stuff. I use an external hard drive.

With an external, you can theoretically copy your entire hard drive. The way I have things set up (or should anyway), when I first got the hard drive I manually copied all of my documents to it. I also set up Norton Ghost to copy my hard drive exactly to the external. I scheduled my PC to do this weekly. Right now, I am also looking for a program that will sync files between the two drives. That way I don’t have to worry about over writing documents or losing any data.

Setting that up will seem like a lot of work at first, but if you’re like me, it is well worth it. Later!

posted on December 19th, 2006 in Computer Stuff, Thoughts| No Comments »