Wednesday, March 9, 2011

ISP Censorship

 ISP Censorship in Australia and how it would affect you.

In the future countries may follow China's suit and censor the Internet. This issue is highly controversial among fellow earthlings. Many people support the idea that some 'stuff' should be filtered but mainly in the following area's;

Pornography.
Viruses, Malware, ect.
Hackers.

More simply put. Block the bad stuff that children shouldn't see so long as what is blocked does not affect me.

One of the areas of the internet that has the most scrutiny is pirating. Yes people know that it's wrong but what's wrong stopped nobody from doing it. This is one of the most discussed areas of internet censoring. Governments and people who lose money from pirating want a push for censorship particularly in this area. Censoring this area of the internet will help protect sales in their minds but is unlikely due to all the ways around the filters.

Also one of the issues with the censorship is that everything that is downloaded by everyone will go through a massive database that’ll be looking for illegal and blocked data. Many people find this an invasion of privacy although it too can be bypassed. The censorship of the internet also restraints people’s rights to freedom but that said people do not have the right to data which they are not entitled to such a music and DVD they did not purchase either physically or electronically.
A lot of people out there who have a liking for porn basically laugh at this filter simply because of the numerous ways to get around it. Many of the ways to get around the filters have come to the attention of local members of parliament.


This image shows the basic setup of how a town, city or large area connects to the Internet. Also remember that the town itself is also part of the Internet.

 There are numerous other ways to connect to the internet. Note that if a server is located locally the data can be configured to connect directly to the server without going through the ISP.


Proxy servers. These will be the first of the ways around the filter to go. As people spread the word the word will leak and the proxies will go down. Yes many will get a few days to look at the stash and download the illegal maybe even perhaps months before the filter is updated.

Encryption. Bam. Now you’re laughing at the filter. Everything will be encrypted and no filter will be able to tell what’s what. This is sure to take off when a filter is placed on the masses.

P2P file sharing. Now if there’s any chance the filter will work it stops at P2P file sharing. Everyone who connects to a P2P file sharing site then becomes a host. Now the data can be downloaded from each and every computer in the world! The censorship will now have to only allow access to approved servers and this crosses the line for almost everyone. Everything you do on the Internet would now have to be approved by the government. Yeah right there’s still a way around this!

Lots of little ISP’s pop up all over the world. These little ISP’s create the black Internet which is my way of saying the black market of the Internet. With ISP’s now out of control the filter is broken and the world goes back to the way it was before the censorship. Now if the inevitable result is the destruction of the censorship and the current ISP’s then why even bother? It’s the government and that’s a good enough explanation. Be prepared for your Internet to become super cheap and slow.


"They May Take Our Lives, But They'll Never Take Our Freedom"

There is also a big issue of freedom of information. The filter could take away lots of information that remains unclassified. Games and movies that are unclassified or too violent will also be blocked. This includes sites like YouTube as user generated content sites would be refused classification due to the shear amount of content. If the government controls what information we have access to. It might not belong before they control how we think and move.

Friday, March 4, 2011

iPad 2, thinner, more power and ultralight

Apple has announced the iPad 2 it offers little more than the original iPad. It is thinner, lighter and more powerful than ever before. The original iPad brought high revenue when it was first released bringing more than 10 billion dollars in revenue to Apple through the sale or 15 million units. We will soon find out if there has been enough changes to the iPad to make people what to buy the new iPad 2.

It is possible that it will turn out like Microsoft's Office 2010 which provided little improvement over 2007 and did very poorly in it's opening sales. That is of course if Apple doesn't hype things up (Which it always does). Those who have just brought the original iPad can receive a refund of up to $180 dollars and the price is decreased to make way for the iPad 2.

The new iPad 2 specs.

The iPad 2 comes with a dual core processor. This is sure will make computing quite a bit faster over the old 1Ghz Single core CPU seen on the original iPad.

The iPad 2 also comes with a new iOS operating system. The new  iOS 4.3 allows iPhones to act as Wi-Fi hot-spots. This will enable mobile phone internet access (Like the 3G in the original iPad) but through the phone. Just watch those downloads!

A longer lasting battery which will provide hours of entertainment

With all this new stuff Apple has still managed to shave 80 grams off the total weight. Weighing in at just 0.8kg.

If you where thinking of buying an iPad then you wait for the iPad 2. The iPads are not very powerful considering their price and there are plenty of other tablets out there which do the job just as well. Most if not all of the others have flash which opens it up to a world of other things. If you like to have something expensive and want Apple to control everything you can watch, download and play then the Ipad is for you. If not there are many convertible notebooks which convert between a touchscreen notebook and an tablet. Basic models will pack more of a punch in processing than the iPads and have many more options for the end user.

Now it's your turn to make up your mind.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Logisim

Download Logisim it is a very neat program which lets you create and test hardware and much much more and it's free!

Learn how hardware actually works and what you happens in a easy and fun way. Make traffic lights. A processor. Whatever hardware you want!

I have to say that this is a really good program.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

DNS shop

What to start up your own DNS server? Big boys won't let you in? Too many restrictions and fees?


DNSshop.weebly.com provides DNS solutions. You can host your own or use one of their hosts.


I've had a look at the packaged offered and it is very nice. I do have one thing to say. It will take awhile before the DNS host is big enough so that lots of people know about it. But that's the same for most companies.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Gravity waves.

As most people know gravity (which is related to mass & space) and time is related, called spacetime. Scientists have setup an experiment involving beams of light over two long distances and mirrors to try and capture gravity waves.

Their theory is that a gravity wave distortion will increase or decrease the length the light travels over for one of the distances and when the two pieces of light meet together they will be sync. This is however great in theory but they have forgotten one thing and wasted millions of dollars. Time. A distortion is space has an effect on time. When gravity is increase or decreased time also is effected. The results would show that using time to measure the distortion will be impossible because gravity and times relationship would remain constant. They are yet to find a gravity wave using this method. No surprise there.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Speedfan

I downloaded this program called speedfan which lets you monitor can control your computer fans. When I installed it and ran it for the first time I left my computer on idle and for some reason my CPU temp was 50 degrees Celsius. Now that is very high considering it's doing nothing.

Next I decided to see what the tempter gets up to when running a game. I started FSX and let it run for awhile. This is what happened.

0min CPU 51C Core 20C

4min. CPU 76C   Core 40C

10min CPU 80C Core 44C

It just kept it's temperate the same for the next hour. Now I thought that it would of over heated and crashed because the maximum temperate it can handle is 55 - 65C but it didn't. So I restarted my computer and left it to idle and this time the CPU temp seemed much more accurate. Please note that I didn't give it time to cool down (Warm Boot).

CPU 37C Core 24C.

Now that seems much more accurate for a computer on idle. SpeedFan probably didn't configure right on first use.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Chat-ID stops trolls and spammers

There is some new software coming out soon and it will stop most trolls and spammers on sites that sign up to use it. The software is a download which must be downloaded on a computer in order for the user to access the chat or forums. If it becomes popular a simple add on for popular web browsers will be built.

The software is set to be free to use for users. Website owners must register and gain approval (To fight software abusers).

This is the current website (They will move later)
chat-id.weebly.com

Saturday, January 22, 2011

10 Billion Apps have been downloaded

Wow, now that's a lot of apps. Here is the official download rate each hour before the 10 billionth download and the real number of downloads. This is not taken from the counter that you saw on the apple promotion page.


Time is based on where apple servers are located.



Friday 21st of January 2011


(Time/Downloads/Download Rate per hour)

5pm 9987919363, 1337327
6pm 9989254245, 1334882
7pm 9990643916, 1389671
8pm 9992020664, 1376748
9pm 9993308790, 1288126
10pm 9994438807, 1130017
11pm 9995451711, 1012904

Saturday 22nd of January 2011

12am 9996434829, 983118
1am 9997471822, 1036993
2am 9998596648, 1124826
3am 9999906427, 1309779 

Apples site really slowed down after this and this was when the 10 billionth app was downloaded.

Estimated Time of download. 3.03am apple server time.

How did you do, where you asleep?

Monday, January 17, 2011

Embed the Scratch experimental viewer on your website.

Many people know that scratch is moving to a flash based platform. MIT has created an experimental viewer but at the moment only those who sign up to use it can access it. I will tell you how you can embed the flash version on to your website.

First of all you might as well sign up to use the experimental viewer as this will make it much easier to embed in a web page. Navigate to the project you want to embed and view it in the experimental viewer. Right click on the edge of the viewer (not on the flash object) and look at the page source.

You should see something like this
<div class="frame" id="div">
<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
  codebase="http://macromedia.com/cabs/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"
  id=Scratch WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="100%">
 <PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="/static/experimental/Scratch.swf?owner=what-the&
projectname=1003864&userid=369503">
 <PARAM NAME="bgcolor" VALUE="#000000">
 <PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=medium>
 <PARAM NAME="allowScriptAccess" VALUE="always">
 <param NAME="wmode" VALUE="opaque">
 <EMBED src="/static/experimental/Scratch.swf?owner=what-the&projectname=
1003864&userid=369503"
  bgcolor="#000000"
  WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="100%"
  allowScriptAccess="always"
  wmode="opaque"
  TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash">
 </EMBED>
 </OBJECT>
<div class="popup"></div>
 
 
You should see something like this
<EMBED src="/static/experimental/Scratch.swf?owner=what-the&projectname=
1003864&userid=369503"
 
Copy the username, project number and userid into this code in red.
<div class="frame" id="div">
<EMBED 

src="http://scratch.mit.edu/static/experimental/Scratch.

swf?owner=username&projectname=projectnumber&userid=userid"
        bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
        WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="100%"
        allowScriptAccess="always"
        wmode="opaque"
        TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash">
    </EMBED>
</div>
 
If done correctly it should look like this.



Because of this websites source code the player has been resized.
Save it as .HTML in notepad. Play around with it add some text above and below. Give the frame a set size to control the size of the flash player.

Tow a wheelbarrow with next to nothing.

Well if you've seen my previous posts (Motorised bike and Spinning platform) you'll know that I can be very creative. And for no reason I decided try and tow a wheelbarrow with a bicycle with just random stuff lying around the house. This was the result.
 Image may have been edited.

What I used:
  • A bicycle
  • 3 wood things you put in the garden
  • A wheelbarrow
  • Some random green string like stuff.
How did it go?

It was a good plan and it did work but not very well. The wood was not secure properly and it came off, a lot. This made it very dangerous and I had to keep my speed low. I've never towed anything before and this was a good experience as I almost jackknifed it a few times.

I was going to use tent pegs as a pivot point but I couldn't get them to stay put. It would of worked if I had masking or duck tape to keep the things in place but I couldn't find any tape. If I can find the tape then I'll have another shot at this.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Isn't technology amazing

Technology amazes many. To others it's "Why didn't I think of that" and for the less fortunate it's just frustrating. When people see other people not using technology to it's full potential it can be very frustrating, especially when they want some information and the other person does it the slowest way possible to access it on the Internet. Kind of like the cartoon in this video.

Well the guy using the computer has to learn sooner or later. If he doesn't learn now what's he going to be like in 10 years time?

We have moved.

We have moved our blog to blogger from our old site at technologyintelligence.wordpress.com to techintelligence.blogspot.com.

Don't worry about our old posts they have been moved over to here as well. We will begin to shutdown the old blog over the coming days. Please tell everyone that the new blog is here.

Scratch and the Kinect

Wow. Stephen Howel a computer science lecturer in Ireland has developed a program which uses the open source drivers that enables the Kinect to be used on a computer to transfer the data from the drivers to Scratch. This has enabled an even larger opportunity for people who use Scratch and even those who use BYOB. The program OpenNI2Scratch can be downloaded on Howels site here.

This video was made by Howel and it introduces the new features which are now available to those who use Scratch. This is truly some great stuff. Now only if I had a Kinect.
http://player.vimeo.com/video/18562642

Skeleton view in Scratch
A project in Scratch which shows all the movable joints which are avaliable at the moment.

To the moon in 2020

NASA wants to head back to the moon in 2020 and possibly colonise it to see the effects of long-term space travel before it tries to send man to mars. Will they do it? Will something go wrong? Will a commercial company beat them to it? Your thoughts?

Happy New Year!

Happy new year to you. Yes you reading this right now.
Infomation will still be slow in the coming weeks. Talk about your new years resolution if you want to.

Nearly Christmas

Well it’s nearly Christmas so our blog is going to be slowing down for a few weeks. If any news comes up or other things come up we’ll let you know. Thanks and check back soon.

Nothing

Not much to post today. Well there’s this:

Any ideas on what to post about will be appreciated. Might have some more news later in the week otherwise.

Fan motor information update

I found out some more specifications on the motor. Because it is a fan motor it is single phase AC and appears to be an induction motor. This means that to use it as a generator I must have it on and make it spin faster than what it normaly does.
That gets rid of my plan to use it as a wind turbine to recharge batteries but I could still use it with a petrol motor to convert the mechanical energy output into electrical energy.
The only other think I can think of doing with it is to make a robot. But it will have a very long extension cord or $1000 of batteries with a DC to AC converter.
Any other ideas anyone?
Please see the previous posts for more information about my experiments.

Update of spinning platform

I moved the spinning platform on to a bike to see how fast it can go. So I connected up the Fan Motor to a Tent Peg and fed it through the hole of the platform to the other side. I had to do this because there was no way to reach the other side without doing it.
Items used.
Old Fan Motor
Metal Platform made in the previous post.
A tent peg
an old bike with a missing front wheel
Sticky Tape
Here based on calculations from the video are the results of full power. (50 watts)
RPM: 1800
Top speed: 3.4km/h with no weight (minus the metal wheel, minus energy loss, no gear box)
Energy rating: 17 watts per km with no weight.
This is quite interesting for me. I don’t know about you. Well the best thing I’m going to be able to power off this is probably a robot. The smaller wheels will reduce wheel weight and the light weight of the robot should allow it to reach a decent speed.
Here is a short video:


Spinning platform out of used parts

I made a spinning platform out of used parts. At the moment it is unstable and I need a proper base and a proper way to attach the platform. So far everything has been constructed with these parts.
An Old Fan
An Old Metal Door
A shoe Box
And a little stickytap
What I did was use the motor in the fan to spin a sheet of metal (Which is very poorly cut. Do not touch or you’ll bleed to death :) ). The controller which comes with the motor and I cut out the sheet of metal from a door. Total construction time was about 5 hours of which 4 hours 30 minutes was spent on the sheet of metal.
In the future I plan to use the blades as a small wind turbine to power a light or recharge a small battery. Also note this is the first time I’ve ever built something (Not out of plastic construction pieces). The total cost was nothing except for some cuts and aching arms as I cut the metal with gardening tools.
IMG_0205IMG_0207IMG_0206