One small step for man, one giant leap for trekkies

(The Continuing Crisis:  Still don't have Internet at home.  No idea when I will at this point.  Been too busy at work calibrating German aerial cameras)

There are a lot of awesome and cool things out there- but 3D movies, are not one of them.  I may have annoyed a few of you by saying that, but come now.  Even you must admit that 3D glasses are basically suck that you put over your eyes.  Also, there is the fact that 3D animators can't really go all out with the cool 3D effect, because then they'll give most of the audience migraines. This is a real thing and happens because your brain and eyes suck.

Things that are awesome and cool: Rainbow Dash

Not to mention, in scientific studies, most people do not give a rats ass about 3D.

Personally, I think the entire 3D movie thing is a letdown and generally not worth the price of the ticket.  Which is sad, because I do watch movies just for the CGI effects.  It's the only good reason to see Transformers 2, after all.  But, because of the limitations of how our eyes work, the illusion of 3D isn't a good viewing medium, and in its current state never, ever will be.

So, clearly, science has decided that we need to scrap this crap and take a note from Star Wars.  Fuck fake 3D- lets do real 3D by screwing around with lasers and microscopic mirrors to create real holograms.

not pictured- headaches, 3D glasses, or any of that stupidity.

Now, this technology isn't out on the market yet, but the people behind it want to do a proof-of-concept model that does real holographic 3D in high-freaking-definition by mid-2012.  Also known as, before the world ends.

Also known as- HOLY UNICORN FARTS THAT IS THIS SUMMER.

And don't think we'll have technology adoption problems- the BBC's R&D department is already working on a 3D holographic camera and smart people at MIT say they're getting damn close to a holographic TV camera using everyone's favorite controller for everything except video games- Microsoft's Kenect.

How close?  Try 15 fps close.  Or in the words of David Bowie: They're half way there.

Or they'll send me back to magic kindergarden...

First things first, sorry about yesterday.  The Internet still doesn't work at my house because I have made abosultly no move to try and fix it.  I blame the fact that my uncle gave me ALL THE BOOKS I EVER WANTED for Christmas, and I'm basically a bookoholic.  There is no middle ground for me, just like there is no "drinking for taste" for the drunk.

One sip/sentence, and we're fucked up beyond all reason.

George R.R. Martin is ruining my life

So, I'm crouching here, in my neighbor's fucking bushes with my netbook and my trusty 8 gb flash drive, hacking his WPA2 protected password to get on his wifi, and because I don't want to get caught in the act (not that he knows how, but one can never be to careful...) I'm also covering my tracks by pretending to be one of his own computers.  It's less tricky than it sounds, to be honest.

Because the Starks would love the current weather, and I don't have time to actually research a cool post, I'm going to go over the much easier task of hacking a WEP password using some cool programs anyone can download.

I give you power tonight.  Tonight you become men.

If reading isn't your thing, check the video version out.

To start, your hardware sucks and needs upgrading.  You'll need a wireless adapter that can inject packets, and the one that comes with your computer can't do that, Dave.  They're super cheap (some dude is selling his favorite brand of air-crack router for $12 on e-bay).  I recommend the Alfa AWUS036H, but There are tons of options out there.

Next, you'll need to boot to backtrack- which is a version of the Linux operating system.  You can create a boot CD, or install it on a flash drive, so you can use it without needing to isntall it on your system.Check here for how to do this, I'm getting really damn cold and don't feel like going into it.  Be warned, backtrack is based in UNIX, so you'll need to put your big boy pants on and handle a real operating system.

Now, after you boot into backtrack, open up the provided comand prompt, Konsole, and start typing in commands.  This is known as the fun part.  It's a 10 step process, so be warned- this shit is a bit advanced.  I have faith in none of you being retarded, however.  All in all, the thing you need most is patence.  And don't suck at typing.
To start, you'll want to type: airmon-ng

This should return a list of network interfaces.  Pick the shiny new you you just bought to break into people's wireless- and keep track of the name.  You'll want to use the name in palce of the (interface) tags for these next few lines:

airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

Conrats!  You now look like you are a new computer on the interface with the MAC address of 00:11:22:33:44:55.  MAC addresses are unique addresses given to each computer when they're manufactured.  They're hardware enforced, so you can't change yours after you get your PC, but you can pretend you have a different one (which is what you're doing now).

Time to pick a victim.  The next command is:
airodump-ng (interface)

This will return a list of the wireless networks around you.  Figure out which one you want to hack, then type:

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

(channel) is your network's channel, (file name) is something descriptive you can remember later, (bssid) is the BSSID of the network you want to hack and (interface) is the same as always.

Leave the result you get from that command be.  Open a new window and type:
aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

The new tag (essid) is the SSID of the network you want to crack.  This also should have been visible when you went hunting for a victim a few steps back.  What you've done, in a nutshell, is let yourself snoop on the network.  Now its time to generate a ton of traffic to create a crack to get you in for real.  Next step, type:
aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Still with me? That's fantastic! What we've done here is generate extra router traffic to speed up the crack.  However, even with the extra traffic, this still takes about one forever.  Leave.  Get a sandwitch.  Go read a book.  You'll want to wait until #Data goes over 10k.  After that happens, open a third konsole window and type the last command:
aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

If the coding gods are with you, you'll get a KEY FOUND message (if not, you'll need to collect more data.  Make another sandwitch or play Minecraft or something).   The WEP key will appear next to the KEY FOUND, just enter it in without the colons and congratulate yourself, you just broke into a wireless network.

DISCLAMER: Stealing and breaking and entering are bad.  My neighbor and I are very good friends, I wouldn't be breaking into his wireless if I wasn't sure he wouldn't really mind.   This is a handy trick if you ever forget your WEP key and don't want to have to reset everything to get it (maybe you share a network with other people and bringing the whole thing down would be very bad).

I'm off to bed... happy hacking!

No Post Today

My internet connection is on the fritz.  I'm writing this from my Windows Phone knockoff, which should tell you that I do have the cheapest "smart" phone on the market.  And by smart I mean dumb fuck retarded.

I apologize- I'll get the internet working tomorrow and get a post up then.  I'm pretty sure I can do this, I have a patented method where I yell at my ISP until I get a real software engineer on the line and then we talk shop/Dijkstra's Algorithm/Star Wars for an hour while my problem gets fixed.

I think it's my router that's playing hard to get at the moment, to be totally honest... anyway.  Post tomorrow, Internet being a fickle bitch tonight.

Birds: Only Getting Smarter

We generally seem to understand which species will probably rise up to murder us.   Not that there are that many- as a race, humans are pretty damn good at killing the fuck out of Nature.  And to be honest, nine times out of ten, mother nature probably deserves it.  Because mother nature is a bit of a dick.

I sorta blame Mother Nature for The Happening.   Just a little bit.

I mean, you've got to keep tabs on the primates, because even though we evolved from them, you never know when they might get funny and decide to try evolution again.   You know, like a family that randomly decides to have a second child after the first is throwing up on them.

And then you got termites, which are terrifying because they build 30-foot tall mega cities, complete with vents for crude AC.  And the various horrors that live under the ocean, that if they were to gain any sort of higher brain function, would take over the Earth in a matter of seconds.

This is not an Elder God.  It actually exists, right now.

However, if you ask me, Hitchcock was on to something with The Birds.

It turns out that not only can crows recognize and remember human faces (so, if you ever cheat a crow out of a bet, that crow knows its you, and will probably peck your eyes out), but they also can use metatools (tools meant to manipulate other tools) also known as simple machines.

This puts crows on the level of humans, primates and elephants in cognitive tool use.  Also known as FUCK, THE BIRD THAT KNOWS MY FACE CAN FIGURE OUT A SPEAR.

You might think that this was an isolated development, that one crow just got really damn lucky a few times. Well, your goddamn wrong because crows can learn from each other.  So, that fucking crow that know and remembers your face, that knows how a spear works has already told all its friends.  And now they're all out to get you.

The crow, right before they start a new sky empire and destroy humanity.

Copyright laws and IPs- finally comming around to haunt the Internet

I do believe it was Shakespeare who first uttered the legendary "This shit writes itself" quote, but it could have been Mark Twain.

Because both writers are so damn similar and everything.  I was worried this was going to be the first day I would miss my posting schedule without a forwarding or at least  an apology.  It's 9:23 right now my time, I've been in a pair of restricted labs all day and I won't lie, writing up something for the blog slipped my mind.

This is one of the labs I work in.  You may now place bets on what I do.

I could have tried to pirate the post.  Steal someone else's idea, hope to the flying spaghetti monster that they actually did decent research and just copy and paste.  It would be a little fitting, to be honest.  Considering how much piracy and file sharing goes on the Internet these days, a stolen blog post would be really funny in a not-funny-at-all hipsterish way.

But I hear hipsters don't like mathematics (the language that describes the universe) because it's too mainstream (the entire universe digs it), so they can go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.  Also, I hear hipsters find sex to mainstream, so be prepared to have a "physical-love-conjuncture" instead.  Because that's so romantic.

Yeah, a nerd is calling out a hispter for sucking at romance.  It may not get any more ironic... aw, shit.

Anyway, I didn't have to go hipsterfy myself because I got more lucky than the Lucky Charms mascot, who isn't lucky that he still has his cereal- he has magic for that- but is incredibly lucky those kids haven't murdered the hell out of him yet.  Everyone knows a young child will do what it takes for marshmallows.  Whatever. It. Takes.

Now that I look at a box, Lucky's lucky his cocaine high hasn't ended yet

So, away from making fun of cereal box mascots and back to tech.  It turns out that the RIAA pirates the living fuck out of TV shows.  How many many TV shows?  Try something along the lines of nine million dollars worth of TV shows.

Daaaaaamn.  That takes dedication.  Like, wow.  You have to be intentionally creating things just to steal them to steal that much.  Oh wait- it was full seasons of just Dexter?  Just that one show?  That was worth nine million dollars?

Now, this is mildly unfair to RIAA- because to get to nine million, we have to play by their own outrageous rules.  In order for one to that high, you simply use the RIAA guidelines that the shareholders can sue for $150,000 dollars an episode, or maybe more, depending on how you look at the phrase "copyrighted works".  Is each word copyrighted?  Each line?  How about the opening theme, is that an additional one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?  Or any original bit of music from the sound track?

Considering the recent debacle with the Megaupload song and Universal, a lot of old copyright protection techniques just seem retarded in this day and age.

Also, Youtube (and by extension, Google) doesn't have a soul or a lick of backbone, as apparently Universal has a contract with Youtube that lets them use the content management system to take down videos that have nothing to do with copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, people who fight for a traditional implementation of copyright law are often found the biggest perpetrators of file sharing- movie studios are often caught pirating their own movies.

The whole damn thing is sorta ironic- maybe the hipsters and I have more in common than I like.

Google vs Theoretical Quantum Physics, round one...

I made a promise to myself when I stared this blog.  Nothing serious, it wasn't like I hooked my little fingers together and made a pinkie promise with myself.

Also, if there is ever a promise you never, ever back out of, it's a pinkie promise.  That is the most legit kind of promise out there.  You keep them, even if you're dying because a rock from space hit you in the spleen and you're dying from complications due to infection.  You keep that damn pinkie promise to pick up your little sister from soccer practice and you do it with a smile.

Back on subject, I promised I wouldn't do quantum physics- namely, I wouldn't do posts on quantum entanglement, or quantum teleportation.  For a few reasons, the first being that it is not nearly as cool as it sounds, and two, because it's been talked about to death.  Any and all awesome that it once contained has been bled out slow news day reporters (who are probably vampires in secret, have you seen how pale they look?) and people getting confused and thinking that it has anything to do with the LHC, or more commonly known as the black hole machine.

Point: It does sorta look like an entry portal for Cuthulu

But, I break all my (non-pinkie related) promises, so here is a very quick and dirty primer on quantum entanglement, so we can get to the good stuff.  Quantum entanglement is the synching up of electrons across how ever far they damn please.  After scientists have forced a pair of electrons to synch up, whatever they do to one electron is done to the other.  This is commonly tested with electron "spin".

Note: Spin isn't how the electron spins.  See why I didn't want to do a post on this?  Friggin' theoretical physicists can't name things for shit.  It's actually how the plar-- you don't need to know any of this to get it later.  Just remember that when scientists change the "spin" on one electron, the other one changes too.  Instantaneously.  No distance lag, no time lag.

Yeah, it really does make absolutely no goddamn sense.

Here is some artist's picture representation of it.  Note how this also makes no goddamn sense

"Spin" is a handy property because it only has two values.  We'll call those values 0 and 1.  You know what else uses 0's and 1's in everything it does?  Its a marvel of the modern world, ubiquitous on all continents including Antarctica.  Your using it right now, and it isn't an ingredient in jello roofies.

It's your computer- which does all the awesome things it does based on binary, which is a way to count that only uses 0 and 1.  See where I'm going yet?  If we were to build a computer out of quantum entanglement, we could get data to go even faster than it already does.  We're vaguely starting to see the limits of using electricity (which flows at the speed of light).  Quantum entanglement goes even faster than that.

Pictured: Superman being slower than quantum entanglement.  Because we can see him.

Why does any of this matter?  Because some guys recently figured out how to copy Google's search algorithm using quantum entanglement.  As you know, that algorithm was the reason why Google became the all-Father of the Internet, the great god that looms over us all and dispenses us with information and silly search histories if we ask nicely.  So, when (because who are we kidding if.  These are scientists we're talking about, they're damn crazy enough to get it working) the quantum net comes online, we'll already have the greatest search algorithm in place to view it.

And they're also Spanish.  You heard it here first- Spain is totally going to ransom off the new quantum net in a desperate bid to become a relevant country again.

Today's post is about boobs

I don't have a lot of time to write today.

It's the first week of break away from finals (or Fuck I Never Actually Learned Shit for those unfamiliar with the acronym), and as such, I'm writing this at a party.  Because I'm on break damn it, and I deserve time off.  So, I had to kinda go for some low hanging fruit for blog inspiration, as I didn't have (read as: spend) a lot of time reseraching this post.

I'm coming in a close second to the "Fucks I don't give" category

So, lets talk about something I know your interested in: Boobs.

Or rather how your perspective on boobs and the female flesh they're attached to.  It turns out that the kind of porn you're into is an indicator of how poor you are.

Furries and other people into weird shit are exempt:
1) because I don't want to loose my faith in humanity right now
2) because I'm sure there is a subset to the Rules of the Internet somewhere that says that whenever you try to catagorize all the fetishes, you get another one.

I'd post a rule-34 related picture and make that joke because I'm lame today, but I want to keep the blog sort of kid friendly.  If the parents of said kids don't mind my incessant swearing and racist/sexist references.

Back to boobs.

Proving that scientists can't get close to women outside of labs, some scientists did a study on Playboy magazines.  What they found out was that during tough economic times, men (or lesbians) tend to prefer Playboy bunnies with larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios and smaller body mass indexes.  Another study (at this point, study sorta seems to need to be in quotes) found that that men also prefered older and heavier bunnies.

So, to recap- when you have almost no money, you prefer your porn to be of the more cough, realistic, cough verity.  Why?  Well, in order to pretend they were still actually doing research, the scientists got drunk after their days of going over Playboy magazines and came up with the Enviromental Security Hypothesis.

Or rather, its the scientists saying that men prefer women better at reproduction (your standard model type) during good economic times and prefer women better at production (this adjusted model type) during rough economic times.

So, if your wondering why that mole suddenly seems to turn you on, its because you just got laid off.
heh. laid.

Meanwhile, in Biology...

I freely admit, this blog is pretty focused on only one brand of science- Computer Science.  This is clearly because computer science is just better than all the other sciences.  Obviously.

And not at all because computer science is what I do every day.  Of course not.  That'd just be silly.

However, although I have looked into artifical life before, I don't give the other branches of science their dues.  And for this, I apologize.  Not that science needs it- scientists are like Mother Nature's little nerdy disciples.  We worship her in the form of esoteric equations and get very, very excited when we think we've got a little tiny bit of her figured out.

But spiders are so cool with their poison fangs and evolution-honed body meant for killing things.  I don't get why other people are scared of them at all.

Scientists are special people.  We walk the fine line between "crazy" and "bat-shit insane" and at some point decided to use our innate lunacy for the forces of good and try to understand this universe we live in, rather than going postal on a city block.

The fact that life, the universe, and everything is infinitely complex and will probably never be fully understood by human minds only makes us want to try harder, because APPLES, DAMNIT.

Back to biology.  Remember that wooly mammoth thigh bone that paleontologists found back in august?  Well, it turns out that there was perfectly persevered bone marrow in there.  You know what bone marrow contains?
I'll give you one guess- the religious right goes absolutely ballistic whenever you mention it.

Occupy Wall Street?

Pretty close, actually, but not quite what I was going for.  Bone marrow contains stem cells, which are the types of cells that can be grown into any other cells.  But most importantly, these cells have been so well preserved that we can see their nuclei.

Which means, biologists are going to try to clone it.  They think that if they replace an elephant's egg cell's nucleus with one of the ones from the woolly mammoth fossil, we can get a living, breathing woolly mammoth.

What kind of relevant research data will this provide?  Badass, that's what!  Have you seen Jurassic Park?  For the first time ever, it's not just sorta, kinda like that.  This is exactly like that, except with ancient elephants instead of dinosaurs.  And the biologists think they can get it in just five years.

You're getting a five year time table in which people are going to bring something back from extinction that has been dead for the entire span of recorded human history.  How is this not the greatest thing you've heard all day, exactly?

This, walking the Earth again.  Balls yes.

Now, I know what your thinking.  "But, Relimited, how can I get in on the inevitable high stakes gambling that's bound to occur as people bet on which country will have the mammoth in a zoo first?"

Never fear, I got your back, you can place your bets here.  Also, you can bet on when the mammoth will actually be cloned, playing the odds against the scientists' predictions.  And yes, I plan on getting one after their domesticated and riding to work on its back.

Like that shitty relative you have who sleeps in the garage, guess what's back?

November is over!  Yay!

We are now in the much better month of December, where people murder each other for a chance to act like they saved a metric shit ton of money on gifts they pretend to have bought for other people.

This is also known as my favorite month of the year.  But even more importantly, the blog is BACK.  IN.  ACTION.  Now that I'm not writing that pesky novel thing for November, we can go back to talking about how the robots are almost assured to take over humanity in our life times. It's cool.

Speaking of the novel, it isn't actually hosted in it's entirety here.  I don't know if I plan on uploading the finished (ish) manuscript.  After seeking the wise council of people who can actually write,  I've decided to sit on it for a few months before I start edit work.  I'll keep you guys posted n' stuff.

So... what to post, what to post?  Oh, hell if I know or actually plan this shit out.  Lets see what the all-father Google has to say about, um, midgets?

Nothing on the Randy Newman classic, "Short People Got No Reason To Live"?  Google, I am disappoint.

Ok, never fucking mind.

Here's something awesome- Intel recently unveiled their new teraflop chip, which if you don't know, is goddamn fast.  Flops stand for floating point operations per second, so that's 1000000000000 operations every second.  For context, it takes me about 15 minutes to do a floating point calculation by hand, and most hardcore gaming gear can't really push a kiloflop, which is only 1000 operations every second.

Now, before you go rushing to go try and attach the new chip to your rig (or go sell some children into slavery to afford one) do note that this isn't a CPU.  It's a secondary processor, built for its ability to do scientific calculations.  Getting those very high flop numbers requires a lot of optimization.  You'd actually get shitter performance trying to run a standard OS on it.

Or even use it as a GPU.  Don't get any crazy ideas.  Still, the fact that the chip exists is goddamn awesome.  So far, it looks like we're nowhere even close to slowing down Moore's Law.  Which, again, for those playing at home, is the theory that computational power doubles every year.  Which means by 2013, computers will by 16 times more powerful than my laptop, and by 2015, the robots will learn how to use human fear as high octane fuel.

No word on how soon it'll be before people actually go into the information grid, Tron-style though.

As  a computer scientist, this picture terrifies me on many, many levels