Aetheric Research, Ltd.

Communications are important.  Living in today’s world, most people expect to have instant or near-instant access to communication networks, whether by cellphone, computer, smartphone, or other device.  These networks depend on extensive infrastructure, maintained by the various organizations and companies that have an interest in ensuring that the communications flow freely.  These are weak points; in cases of extensive disasters–fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and the like–or in the case of man-made interruptions–terrorism or blackouts–the infrastructure becomes compromised.  With this interruption in communications, there are difficulties not only to the people who live in the affected area but to the emergency workers trying to help them.

To make matters worse, if communications are only partially interrupted, the remaining nodes will quickly become overloaded due to the high demand that far outstrips the supply.  Communications between rescue workers might suffer intermittent outages; text messages may be delayed; members of the public may become panicked over the inability to contact loved ones.  These difficulties can be mitigated:  individuals can be instructed to reserve use of the available communications for emergency personnel; portable communications nodes can be provided; alternate means of communications–radios operating on emergency or commercial frequencies–can be issued.  

This provides certain difficulties:  by nature, the radios are restricted to emergency personnel; they need to be stockpiled and issued after the fact; they add expense to an already expensive undertaking.  Smartphones are widespread and useful in situations other than emergencies and available to the general public, but usually rely on the cellular infrastructure for communications.

However, smartphones do have certain advantages that other radio devices do not have–namely, diversity in programming and in frequency usage that can be potentially leveraged to provide for at least some communications in areas that have been deprived of their primary communications infrastructure.

Generally, smartphones are posessed of three radios: one for the cellular network (which may itself operate on more than one band, but that is not relevant at this time), one for 802.11 networks (“wifi”), and one for bluetooth communications.  Numerous programs already exist that leverage the use of wifi networks to avoid connection charges that might exist on the cellular network; this functionality is not new–though it is somewhat limited to a couple hundred feet from an access point, depending on local conditions, and usually relies on an active internet connection for functionality.  

Wifi does have an alternative mode, however, that could have potential for at least short-range communications.  Ad-hoc networking allows two or more devices to interface without the infrastructure normally required to set up an effective network connection (though, as of this writing, it appears that this mode is not officially supported by various smartphone operating systems).  Extensive research has been done in the means to set up such networks, and they have been (in the case of mine communications) been used for VOIP.

Setting up such a system would require that the smartphone handsets be populated with an app to support the routing required; said app would need to set up an ad-hoc access point and connect to any systems within range.  As handsets are inherently more mobile than fixed access points, these connections would not necessarily be stable; VOIP instantiations may not be entirely practical as they require an unbroken chain.  Text, conversely, can be cached and forwarded when a usable route is found.  In combination with multicast capabilities, it may be possible to discover practical routes from one handset to another in a relatively small-scale mesh network with minimal delay; in combination with routers at the edges of the affected areas providing connectivity to standard internet resources, communications with the outside world can be restored as quickly as a route can be built.

The app to enable these communications would require certain functionalities:  setting up and maintaining an ad-hoc access point; caching traffic in the case of connectivity interruption; agile route discovery; QoS reporting to assist other devices in their route discovery; and, naturally, originating and forwarding traffic.  Ensuring widespread distribution before the disaster or service interruption would be necessary; therefore, partnering with an organization such as the Red Cross or allowing the use of said app to create small-scale social meshes to encourage uptake would be required.  Post-disaster, it would be more difficult to load the app onto devices, so the ability to install the app onto handsets from computers would be helpful–the Android OS allows the user to allow apps from arbitrary sources, so it would be most suitable for this effort.

Creating, near-instantly, a communications network in a disaster area would help to save lives and to speed the recovery of the area, as well as reducing panic and distributing valuable information to persons affected.  Leveraging the existing resources that most persons would already have would make the implementation much less expensive; the humanitarian nature of the cause would be attractive to a number of open-source developers, and development costs would be reduced accordingly.

A mysterious stranger appears in front of an ordinary person–a farmer, let’s say.  They behave in a somewhat odd fashion, and the farmer’s responses to their idiosyncratic behavior determine later rewards or punishments.  Frequently, the farmer is required to keep the interactions secret, or else some dire consequence will come to them.

Is this one of the Greek or Norse myths, or is it a conspiracy theory stripped of all the identifying details?

The structure of conspiracy theories bears a marked resemblance to some of the older myths and legends, and some of the more estoeric tales of saints and demons.  While the exact nature of the mysterious or malign forces which are arrayed against ordinary mortals differ–gods and demons vs. the government, corporations, and “them”–and while the nature of the intervention in ordinary people’s lives is changed, the underlying tropes seem to remain.

Both myth and conspiracy abound with tales of ordinary people happening across extraordinary events and suffering for it–compare the tale of the youth who spied upon Diana with the various tales of persons who supposedly stumbled across mysterious government installations.  There are extraordinary substances that may have benign or malign effect upon the person who consumes them–the waters of the Styx, of Lethe; the golden apples of the Hesperides vs. chemtrails, LSD in the water supply, flouride.  Free will may be removed–consider the <i>geasa</i> put upon various Celtic heroes in the context of government mind control rays.  The Gods can fly across the sky in a day in their chariots of fire; the Government has Aurora.  Odin sits upon his throne and looks down across the world-tree; the Government has spy satellites that can read your license plate.  Zeus threw lightning; HAARP does…something involving the atmosphere.

The conspiracy canon indicates a sort of coherent mythic cycle:  much as those persons who believed in Zeus would concurrently believe in Poseidon, those who believe in one conspiracy are likely to believe in others.  The Gods are not dead; they’ve just evolved into new forms, updated to reflect the reality around the believer.

That’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to reason with a conspiracy theorist about their beliefs–because, to them, it’s an article of faith that the Government or the Corporations or whatever shadowy Them in question they believe in is a malign entity and is out to cause them harm.  The Devil can take a thousand pleasing forms; They can certainly recruit a thousand agents or patsies or unwitting collaborators.  Combine sincere faith in a certain worldview with the perception that those attempting to change one’s faith are out to cause harm, and you have the basic ingredients of a semi-animistic religion.

What makes this demi-religion interesting is that it’s not prone to exclusivity–you can find conspiracy theory beliefs in persons of very nearly any religion.  Just as prechristian animistic beliefs are sometimes recognized in paralell with Christian worship, so too do the conspiracy beliefs exist alongside more conventional belief systems.  It may prove interesting to see if there’s any overlap between conspiracy theorists and those practising animist beliefs–and what the nature of that overlap might be.

The history of the popup ad is fairly long, as far as the web goes, and closely mirrors the adoption of Javascript, which made them possible.  Given the extremely vocal nature of the objections to that sort of advertisement displayed by savvy web users, and given the nature of the Chrome browser as relying heavily on the use of Javascript in order to ensure consistent user experience, Google has wisely decided to ensure that most popups are blocked.

However, given that apparently some people must still actually click on the accursed things, it’s been in the best interest of marketing firms to innovate even more intrusive forms of advertising.  Adblock catches some of them, but there are still occasional popups that do show up; further, there are occasional legitimate uses of popup windows–for various application forms, or for opening video in a new window.

The “Better Pop Up Blocker” addresses these problems.  It sits resident in the omnibar, and when popup javascript is intercepted, it flashes–if the user wishes to open the popup, they can click the icon and receive a list of currently blocked popups, as well as the option to whitelist the domain or to temporarily turn off popup blocking.  

Opening the options for the plugin reveals some interesting other functions–besides the usual popup blocking methods, there’s methods to prevent some of the dirtier tricks (such as popups that spawn after you leave the page, or certain creative uses of otherwise legitimate functions) that the user can enable.  There’s also the ability to disable text selection intercept–one of the more annoying tricks used by some webpages with no respect for fair use to prevent any copying of their text.

Better Pop Up Blocker is better than stock and well worth the download.  It’s mostly invisible–the icon for it is unobtrusive and most of the time you won’t even notice that it’s there.  Highly recommended. 

Things I like:  It works.  It’s customizable, and it properly handles allowing an intercepted popup.

Things I dislike  Wood-grain border for the preferences page?  

Things I would change:  It’d be nice to be able to hide the icon entirely until it’s needed.  

An extension to leverage the use of URL shorteners, ViewThru allows the user the functionality of finding out where a short URL is pointing before following it.

URL shorteners have become popular more or less concurrent with the rise in popularity of Twitter:  the character limit that twitter imposes makes it a challenge to both tweet a meaningful URL and to provide some form of commentary upon it.  As such, services such as bit.ly have become popular, taking a short domain name and a bit of redirect scripting to develop a means of linking to content in as short a form as possible.

Unfortunately, this shortening obfuscates the destination URL, allowing for ‘Rickroll’ hijacking or potentially direction to other undesired–and potentially malicious–content.

ViewThru uses the API provided by most of the major URL shorteners, and provides an expanded view of where the URL is pointing.  It does this by, when the user hovers their mouse over the URL in question, showing a tooltip with the relevant information.  Conveniently, this not only works on websites but within other chrome apps–like, for instance, TweetDeck.

It’s a very simple functionality, but a very convenient one–not only does it enhance safety, but it saves the user from having to go through the redirect themselves to decide whether or not the URL is worth following.

Things I like:  Invisible operation except when needed; universal functionality within the browser

Things I don’t like: the hover window stays just a little shorter than I’d like

Things I’d like to change:  Longer hover window duration, slight delay before the window appears so I can mouse past a link without getting the popup

Yesterday’s post noted that the 100MB free quota appeared to be automatic with rollover to the new month; not so with the paid coverage–somewhat obviously; the paid coverage is intended to be month-to-month.

A query to Verizon Wireless returned an answer that, no, there was no way to reactivate the paid coverage while still within the purview of the free coverage, so the hassle of activation began again.

An important note: while the customer service number provided by the page appears to connect somewhere where there are clueful people–the lady with whom I spoke is only the second technical-support-type representative with whom I’ve ever been able to work effectively on the consumer side of things–they cannot activate the device there at this time; apparently they do not have the access level required to do so.  

When calling, if you do not have a security code set–I did not; if there was some means of setting it previously, I missed it–they’ll want your MEID in addition to your phone number.  To find that, hit the Wrench and call up the settings menu; select the Internet tab, and find the ‘Options’ button next to the Verizon connection.  The MEID can be found under the ‘Device’ tab.

There is a workaround for being unable to grab a connection (two, actually; sometimes you can get past the timeout window if you reload quickly, though that may just be having the luck to catch the server in a usable state):  when on a wifi (802.11) connection, connect to https://quickaccess.verizonwireless.com.  While you canot get usage information when on wifi, the activation page will still work well enough to stick in your credit-card info and get your 3g connection running again.

I’ve filed a couple of bug reports with Google for this issue already; activation is far too much of a chore, and so long as it takes more than a couple minutes to activate a month, the OS won’t be ready for primetime–users aren’t going to want to call up a call center unless they have to, and I have no doubt that when the OS goes live, the quality of the support staff will decline sharply.

Speaking of usage information, I may have found out how it’s accessed; I’ll have to see about writing an extension to display a meter of some sort.

An update regarding the ChromeOS revision that dropped last week–

Taking a look ’round the OS, outside of the features mentioned last time, there have been several other bugs that have been fixed.  Video seems to have smoothed out a bit, though I’m not sure if that’s actual or just perception–going to need to investigate that one further before I declare it ‘squashed’.  The filesystem has been made functional; both the USB port and the SD card reader can be made to read data–a big plus, especially if I’m going to be migrating legacy data to “The Cloud.”  Additionally, the issues that I’d noticed making SSL/TLS (the ones marked “https” for the nontechnical amongst you) connections last for longer than a couple minutes appear to have been resolved; GChat and GMail remain connected when on the wifi for at least a couple hours; this functionality was tested on both open and protected access points, including behind a NAT–I’m read to call that one fixed, as well.

Interestingly, the free 100MB automagically re-upped when the paid chunk ran out, which is handy; I’d read before that I’d have to re-up it every month by hand, which seemed rather antagonistic–if the functionality’s being offered free, then what’s the point in rubbing my nose in it every month?  I’m glad to see that VZW opted to allow automatic refresh here; it makes for a much better customer experience.  I’m still dreading the inevitable purchase page that’ll come up when I run through this 100MB, though–and I’m a little irked that my careful hoarding of my purchased GB had ~100MB left over from it at the end of the month; “rollover bytes” would be kinda nice to have.

There’ve been a couple of new bugs that have cropped up, of course–every once in a while, flash seems to go kaput; I’ve not managed to figure out anything consistent regarding that one.  The ‘home screen’–the tab that pops up with your app selections–seems to have corrupted text on the captions for the large icons….sometimes.  It’s not very consistent like that.

Also, the ‘known issues’ page doesn’t really have any change; there’s no real indication of versioning or progress reports on any of the ‘known issue’ bugs. 

On the whole, though, the user experience has improved; if this pace continues, then there should be a pretty reasonable OS for commercial distribution inside of six months–meaning that if they plan to release this in the spring, they’d better get a move on lest they end up looking like Microsoft or something.

Amongst the traditional beliefs of many European peoples is the concept of a domestic helper spirit–one version is known as the Brownie.  A Brownie, in exchange for a bit of bread and milk, will watch out for and help the family with which they are associated–this includes cleaning and other similar tasks.

Unfortunately, the use of faery labor in one’s household could bring one into conflict with any number of labor laws.  First, bread and milk would not count for sufficient wage; federal minimum wage rules place very strict limits on what proportion of a worker’s pay can be designated by the employer for the purpose of providing meals and housing.  Additionally, traditionally the Brownie has been said to, for instance, warn the family of fire and other hazards by waking them; this watchman function may qualify as overtime work, and demand further compensation.

Further, Brownies are very short, and may qualify for ADA modifications being required to accomodate them.  And then there’s the conflict potential for human workers–exploiting faery labor for kitchen and domestic help would necessarily displace any number of maids and other domestics who currently make a living by cleaning houses and the like; if brownie labor became popular and reliable, then these workers would likely be forced to organize and to lobby for greater oversight in the market.

Additionally, there’s the actions of the brownies themselves when they are displeased with their arrangements–they are said to perform ‘mischevious’ acts (read: criminal mischeif) by breaking plates (vandalism) and driving unwanted people from the house (assault, etc.)–activities which are outside the scope of typically acceptable employer/employee relationships.

Brownies, were they in today’s society, would have great difficulties adjusting–and the people who employ them, typically moreso.

When you live in the cloud, it’s helpful to have a portion of cloud to stash your stuff.  Ge.tt will fill that niche, at least temporarily.  

Ge.tt provides a dropbox service where users can stick files for sharing to other users.  Much like other noted dropbox services (rapidshare, etc.) there is no official search engine nor any external search engine capability provided; the only way to find a file is when someone tells you it’s there.  The interface is clean and simple; the sharing function is usable, and there’s really not much more to be said about basic functionality.

Much like some pastebins, inactive files (those that aren’t accessed on a regular basis) will be removed and inaccessible after a certain period of inactivity.  Registering for an account–which is free–will lengthen this time.  

One of the features mentioned is the ability to count how popular your file has been by counting visits and downloads–which is as advertised: it counts visits and downloads, cumulatively, since the datestamp marking when you first uploaded it.  They also advertise being able to begin sharing the file before it has finished uploading; I was unable to coordinate both a large upload and some observers to verify how that works.

It’s a fairly simple way to temporarily store files; like everything else on the “web 2.0″ it’s prominently marked “Beta”, so the absence of any overt monetizing method should not be too terribly alarming.

Things I like:  free (as yet), clean interface, no overt filesize limit

Things I dislike: not much; there’s one function here and it’s being addressed

Things I would change: it’d be nice to see a little more breakdown of the stats–perhaps an option to view a raw list of access times or something?

It’s beginning to look fairly viable.  Transloading may be possible for reasonable rates.  At this point, it’s just a question of gathering up the typical services and doing some writing.

There was one service some years back that offered transloading, but that was not the focus of their service (which was geared mostly towards one-to-many uploads) and said service went under a while back–no traces of it on the ‘web since a couple years ago.

Sounds like there may be a viable use for the ‘tubesworks.com’ domain yet!

This just showed up this morning.  On first glance, it appears that the preferences pages are skinned a little differently–a slightly cleaner look.  The option is available under “Basic” to show a home button on the toolbar; Personal Stuff appears to offer more options about what to sync; Under the Hood provides a button offering to set up remoting to this computer (which doesn’t appear to be operational on the CR-48–it spawns an account signing box, but nothing appears to work there), and the Users interface has been changed around a little bit.

The about:flags page has some new content, though:  

 
CRX-less Web Apps: Enables support for installing Chrome apps that are deployed using a manifest file on a web page, rather than by packaging the manifest and icons into a crx file.
GPU Accelerated Compositing: Enables 3D CSS and higher performance compositing of web pages using Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) hardware.

GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D: Enables higher performance of canvas tags with a 2D context by rendering using Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) hardware.

Print Preview: Enables an in-tab preview of a print operation.

Native Client: Enable support for Native Client.

Web Page Prerendering.: Speculatively prerenders complete webpages in the background for a faster browsing experience.

Experimental Extension APIs: Enables experimental extension APIs. Note that the extension gallery doesn’t allow you to upload extensions that use experimental APIs.

Click to play: Enables a “click to play” option in the plug-in content settings.

Disable hyperlink auditing: Disable sending hyperlink auditing pings.

Edit:  Good news, it appears the extended filesystem works now, so hooking up an android phone and accessing the SDcard is doable.  Will test the built-in SD slot tonight.