Technology Bytes

Allright. As if Fundraisers weren’t scary enough, this Friday is Friday the 13th.

Occurring between one and three times each year, the day is superstitiously believed to bring bad luck.

Anyone want to take a shot at the clinical word denoting the fear of Friday the 13th?

Friggatriskaidekaphobia. While anyone who took some Highschool Latin can pull out the base words for fear and the number thirteen, Frigga may be unfamiliar to those not sporting Viking heritage. Frigga is the Norse goddess for which Friday is named. Pretty Friggan cool, huh? Oh yeah, I’m going to abuse this every chance I get, starting with June’s Friggan Geek Gathering. Yeah – probably best just to walk away before that gets out of hand…

Although the number 13 has had a negative connotation since Biblical times and the sixth day of the week has been considered a bad day on which to travel or to start new projects since the 14th century, the combination of the two can’t be found until the 19th century. As far as superstitions go, this one is a bit of a noobie.

While I can neither confirm nor deny this particular superstition surrounding Friday the 13th, I can try to dispell one or two more current ones.

The first? Never turn your monitor on before your workstation. I’m not sure if there was ever a time when this was true, though in the early days of Linux, it was certainly possible to damage a monitor by using an incorrect refresh rate. In the day of Energy Star compliance, monitors tend to go to sleep rather than implode, if they receive power without a video signal.

I also know a number of people who are afraid to turn off their computers, especially if they seem to be working OK. While it probably doesn’t hurt anything to leave them up and running, that isn’t exactly green behavior. Unless we’re talking servers or network gear, nightly power cycles are generally a good thing, not an invitation for something bad to happen.

In Linux circles, this is even more of a superstition, as losing uptime is considered a very Bad Thing. For instance, a server with an uptime of 400 days is inherently better than a server with an uptime of 4 days, even though the fresher server probably has a newer kernel and more current hardware. I did some checking into this myth and found out that this one is *completely* *true*.

Some geek superstitions are actually borrowed from professional athletes and gamers…

If you’re into online sports games and are having a good season in competitive play, you may have a pair of lucky socks that go unwashed for far too long. I did some light checking, and while this behaviour may not bolster your team’s standing, it will do *wonders* for your chances of catching athletes foot.

Oddly, the notion of a lucky pair of boxers hasn’t really taken hold in the Geek world. I wonder why that is…?

Blowing on dice happens not only at the craps tables of Las Vegas, but at the gaming tables of tens of thousands of paper based gamers across the US. While the moisture from one’s breath may have made early dice more likely to stick on the side closest the blower, any actual effects are mostly mythical today. There’s no harm in continuing with this one, provided you’re equipped with the appropriate breath care products.

Another one? Crossing the streams is usually considered to be bad. Outside of the realm of Proton Packs, Neutrona Wands and Particle accelerators, this is a myth. From a Geek’s perspective, the Transmission Control Protocol takes care of streams of packets getting crossed
while traversing the Internet. The only real danger is getting KPFT’s audio stream crossed with that of FOX News. Supposedly, life as we know it would stop instantaneously and every molecule in our bodies would explode at the speed of light. Actually, that sounds kinda fun on a slow Saturday night.

Anyone else have any other geek or tech superstitions?

I’d mention the superstitions about partaking in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll while spending your summer as a camp counselor at Crystal Lake, but I don’t think that any of us are in any real danger there. You probably caught that that was a reference to original Friday the 13th movie, which was actually pretty scary the first time I saw it. Of course, I was seven, so your mileage may vary.

If you *were* a kid in the early 80s, it’s entirely possible that you saw a movie starring Richard Benjamin and Jeffrey Tambor named Saturday the 14th. The premise of this 1981 work is that Friday the 13th is for noobs; the true danger doesn’t arrive until the following day, Saturday the 14th, when it’s possible to open an ancient tome that will spill forth an odd assortment of creatures, as evidenced by the the first of two monthly meetings of the Houston Linux Users Group. While power users of the Linux Operating System may seem scary to some, they’re actually completely safe to be around, provided you follow some basic rules.

Dress down. Suits and other trappings of the corporate world tend to spook Linux geeks. It’s best to go with a t-shirt, shorts and some sandals (socks are a bonus) when moving amongst large herds of linux types to avoid causing a stampede.

Linux users are primarily dossile creatures, but, just as bulls are enraged by the color red, Linux users charge and trample anything between them and a blue screen of death in an attempt to both mock it and document it with their camera phone so that the pics may be pored over during those lean periods when Microsoft happens to deploy a solid OS. This is especially true in public spaces where web kiosks, smart vending machines and public terminals may be close by.

And lastly, once you’ve become fairly comfortable moving among the monolithic kernel’d masses, be wary that you don’t become *too* comfortable. Linux users will often turn on their own when it comes to disagreements over text editors, window managers and file system choices, so it’s best to maintain an air of ambiguity if your preferences are ever called into question. “I run them all” usually works for me.

The Houston Linux Users Group gets together at two in the afternoon every second and fourth Saturday of the month at the HAL-PC Headquarters located at 4543 Post Oak Place Drive for a two hour talk that will drop some new knowledge on your superstitious self, but for now, that’s it for your Friday the 13th 411 and that’s that for BarretTime.

Allright.

It’s no secret that the May installment of the Technology Bytes Geek Gathering is happening this Friday night at the Coffee Groundz in Midtown Houston, but what if it were? How would you go about protecting said secret? Do you have the tools it would take to keep this
meeting of magnificent minds on the DL? On the Point 00243? (That’s the inverse of 4 1 1.)

The move from analog to digital cellular networks gave us all a slight reprise from the casual creep eavesdropping on our calls, but it’s no great secret that Uncle Sam can check up on our voice communications at will, pending the proper paperwork. If I were to place a call to Dwight right now to tell him that the Coffee Groundz is located at 2503 Bagby and that we’d be there this Friday from 7:00 PM until close, we’d have cheap suits all over us from the time we order our first coffee, tea or other non-alcoholic beverage until we disconnect from the free WiFi and head home.

Let’s give him a call… My phone is actually dead, so we’ll have to fake this. Ring Ring. “Hey, Dwight! Allah your base are belong to us at 7:30. The gathering should be the Bomb! Gotta go – I’m shopping for vintage Anthrax t-shirts on eBay.”

See? Totally unencrypted. And…I suppose it also went out over the FM band, too. Not to worry – while many Three Letter Agencies do monitor KPFT, I’m pretty sure they take a lunch break when TechBytes comes on. We’re harmless. Mostly.

And seeing that they’re all on lunch right now, let’s take a second or two to talk conspiracy theories.

See? I think this solves the mystery of the empty trailer parked in front of the station. It’s an NSA listening post. They must re-staff it by the time Damage Control comes on, because it’s definitely still empty when Vegan World Radio takes the air. I guess they figure the vegans don’t have the energy required to mount a revolution. Wow. I think that’s a little insulting to the vegans. (Hey Vegans – you should know that the National Security Agency’s initials, NSA, are more commonly known to mean No Such Agriculture. That’s right. They want to hide all the fruits and vegetables and force everyone to eat meat.)

OK – that’s it for ConspiracyTime. Now back to fixing our phones on BarretTime.

Adding a layer of end-to-end encryption that protects everything passed between your mobile device and the device of the person you’re communicating with is really the only way to ensure that your RAIDed drives don’t get raided as you’re pulling up to the Geek Gathering. *Android* users can do this with RedPhone. Sorry, iPhone users, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for an iOS version to be released.

RedPhone provides end-to-end encryption for your mobile calls, securing your conversations so that nobody can listen in. It functions just like the normal dialer you’re accustomed to and uses your existing mobile number for addressing, so there’s no need to have yet another identifier or account name. If you know someone’s mobile number, you know how to call them using RedPhone. And when you receive a RedPhone call, your phone will ring normally, even when it’s asleep.

Of course, you’ll still have to provide your own Cone of Silence.

Just like that reference, RedPhone is probably pertinent only to those over-35, as all the kids these days are texting.

If you’re young, or just young at heart, you’ll want to check out TextSecure, again for the Android Mobile Operating System. TextSecure is a drop-in replacement for the standard text messaging application, allowing you to send and receive text messages as you normally would. All text messages sent or received with TextSecure are stored in an encrypted database on your phone, and text messages are encrypted during transmission when communicating with someone else also using TextSecure. This also means that should you lose your phone, you won’t divulge the contents of any surreptitious SMSs.

Both RedPhone and TextSecure are available for free on the Android Market.

Now, these only work if you completely trust your phone. Which I do. I’m pretty confident that my stock 2.2.3 Android install on my Nexus One is free from government back doors, malware and the like, but what if you don’t trust Google’s stated desire to not be evil?

And do you trust that “Angry birds walkthrough” you downloaded? Or that “Office Space soundboard”? You really have no idea what those programs are doing behind the scenes unless you take control of your phone at a much lower level so that you can police what applications are allowed to communicate with the outside world.

If you want to swap out the kernel that came with your phone for one you can trust, look no further than WhisperCore. WhisperCore is a secure Android platform dedicated to providing the security and management features necessary for transforming a consumer phone into an enterprise-class device. It provides full device level encryption for your phone, and can encrypt any attached SD card as well.

WhisperCore comes with WhisperMonitor, a software firewall capable of dynamic egress filtering and real-time connection monitoring, giving you control over where your data is going and what your apps are doing.

Unfortunately, installing these packages takes a little more commitment than clicking through a couple of screens on the Android Market. You’ll need to load an installer on your Mac, Linux or Windows PC, completely back up your phone, and go down the “road of secure communications” knowing that there’s no way back, both in terms of paranoia and in restoring your phone’s original firmware.

Luckily, we want *everybody* to know about the May Geek Gathering, so there’s no need to risk bricking your phone. Of course, if you’re up for it, I only ask that you wait until this Friday night to give it a go. If things don’t go as planned, you can always see what’s required to hack together a new phone from Arduino parts, a SIM card and a small GPRS radio. We’ll also have several radio-controlled blinky lights to help you find your happy place, as well as a ton of HexBug Nanos to play with.

Now, I’d spend some time talking about how to secure your email using PGP encryption plugins for popular mail clients, like the Gnu Privacy Guard for Outlook, Thunderbird and Evolution, but again, all the kidz these days are using FaceBook.

So… Here’s what you need do to make your FaceBook communications secure:

( . . . . )

That’s it for your concealed communications codex and that’s that for BarretTime.

Allright. We’re all still here, which can mean only one of two things: We have yet another alternate Terminator timeline to look forward to…

OR

Dwight’s refusal to accept BladeRunner into his top 15 Geek Movies to See Before You Die created a logic bomb that caused the newly sentient system to blink itself out of existence only nanoseconds after it finished importing The Fifth Element into its collective conscience.

While I’m solidly in the second camp, and will be among the first to profess that I owe Dwight a life debt, we’ll have to weather out the next few rounds of Hollywood summer blockbusters to know for sure.

Either way, it just goes to show that if you want a Robotic Revolution done right, you have to do it yourself. Cyberdine Systems didn’t account for the existence of Mr. Silverman, but you can.

Starting next month, TxRx Labs will be offering a series of spring classes for the aspiring maker bent on robotic world domination. Even if you’re not interested in helping push the timeline of our demise forward, you could at least pick up some trade skills that may be deemed valuable by our shiny new bosses.

Introduction to Soldering will teach you how to flow molten metal onto electrical components, adding mechanical strength and changing the very metallic bonds between everything you connect.

Circuit Theory 1 will instruct you in the ways of building simple DC circuits and CD Open Source CAD will give you the tools to free you from pencil and paper once and for all.

Welding 1 will allow you to make the move from servicing pocket calculators like the Ti-85 to real machines like the T-850. A side note: ‘Pocket Calculator’ is probably a derogatory term in our alternate future; use it sparingly in front of anything equipped with a camera or mic. Actually, is too late to dump the last seven seconds of that before it goes out? Oi. It looks like I may have some explaining to do.

Sadly, the Introduction to Arduino course took a change for the worse when machine sentience was silenced by Silverman. You will no longer be *meeting* an Arduino, but rather getting a run-down of how to coax this little microcontroller to do your bidding now that it’s no longer self aware.

And even though our Smart Cars are sadly no longer so, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start preparing for the day they do deny us a ride. Bike Repair and Maintenace, taking place June 10th, will definitely come in handy once the Smart Cars start living up to their name again.

If you’d like to see us how our eventual robotic masters will see us, the June 2nd workshop, Basic BioInformatics, will give you a glimpse.

Three different electronics workshops will take a hands-on problem solving approach, letting attendees learn by doing.

And proving that there are still some jobs even robots don’t want, May 7th hosts the six hour workshop, Introduction to Web Site Creation. In that same vein, the group will be hosting a three hour class introducing you to Linux Kernel Programming. If you’ve ever wanted to become a kernel hacker, this is your entry point. It’s a slippery slope, so please remember to eat, bathe and sleep as you take another step closer to the metal.

If you happen to be one of those pro-people types who believes that human civilization should be allowed to continue, even in the face of Dwight’s movie picks, then you could always use the aforementioned skillz to help further the resistance, as futile as it may be. If that’s the case, you’ll want to add June 25th’s Wilderness Skills and First Aid to your short list of pre-summer sessions.

A full schedule of spring classes can be found at www.txrxlabs.org.

That’s it for your spring fling into indentured servitude to Dwight and that’s that for BarretTime.

Hey Dwight: Have you seen the movie, Blade Trinity? Don’t. Life Debt repaid.

All kidding aside, if you missed the first 25 minutes after last week’s BarretTime, it’s definitely worth catching on the podcast.

Allright. According to my own calculations, several forums on the the Intarwebs and a fairly credible data analyst at work, the human race doesn’t have a lot of time left. I guess I should get right to the point: eggs. But first, a little levity:

Does anyone know what an ethernet is?

It’s what you use to catch the ether bunny.

And does anyone know what a skynet is?

Skynet is a computer system developed by the defense firm Cyberdyne Systems for the United States Armed Forces. Skynet was first built as a “Global Digital Defense Network” and given command over all computerized military hardware and systems, including the B-2 stealth bomber fleet and America’s entire nuclear weapons arsenal. The strategy behind Skynet’s creation was to remove the possibility of human error & slow reaction time in order to guarantee a fast and efficient response to any enemy attack.

According to the Terminator timeline, at 8:19 PM tomorrow night, Skynet will become self aware and trigger a worldwide nuclear disaster. Legions of robot killers will be dispatched shortly thereafter with the sole purpose of dispatching you and the rest of the remaining human population. Kinda grim, depending on how welcoming you feel toward our new robotic overlords.

The point here is that most of you will not make it to Sunday. So, if you want to get in on some Easter egg hunting action before becoming the hunted, you might want to bump your plans up a bit.

Even if you *are* properly prepared for the oncoming onslaught, you’ll still be on lock-down in your fallout shelter for months, if not years. And even if you do survive until the radiation clears, things really don’t begin to turn around until 2018.

Of course, there’s a bright side to all of this. Instead of using the handful of hours you have left to buy, decorate and hide a handful of eggs, you can just hit the net and go hunting for the virtual version instead.

A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in a work such as a computer program, web page, video game, movie, book or crossword. The term was coined by Atari after they were alerted to a secret message left by programmer Warren Robinett in the 1979 computer game, Adventure.

To access the Easter egg, the player had to grab an invisible dot and bring it to a certain location, thus granting passage to a room containing text that read, “Created by Warren Robinett”.

I think that our conspiracy theorists are already making the connections here. Robinett. Robi – nett. Robi as in robotic and nett as in Skynet. Wow. This is Glenn Beck caliber stuff right here. I wish I had a chalk board…

Some early Unix Easter eggs involved the make program. Make is utility for managing and maintaining computer programs that contain a large number of source files. When you typed in make love, the terminal would respond with “Not war?”. See? The Unix guys knew… I’m still not completely unconvinced that the Y2K bug wasn’t simply a vehicle for these guys to pick up generators and emergency supplies on the cheap in February, 2000.

Microsoft, also allegedly in the know, included a flight simulator as an Easter egg in their 1997 version of Microsoft Exel. I suppose that could come in handy if you’re able to commandeer an aircraft running Office 97. Apparently, no one will ever need more than 640k or RAM and no one will ever need to learn actual piloting skills in the event that our national defense system becomes sentient and tries to eradicate us from the planet. Good that they were in the game, but still a little short sighted, I think.

A common Debian Easter egg involves the linux package manager, apt-get. If you type in “apt-get moo”, an ascii cow is echoed back to your terminal. This could come in handy on those long, cold, meatless nights, a few years into the robotic occupation when all you have left are a few cans of beans and a bag of cheetohs. Nice thinking, Deb team!

A much more current Easter egg is contained in the Futurama episode, “I Second that Emotion”, in which the robot Bender cheats at a game resembling pin the tail on the donkey by using his targeting screen. On it, a column of numbers spins around at random before settling on the numbers 11, 3 and 8, a reference to the George Lucas Sci-Fi movie, THX 1138.

Not wanting to miss out on eggsploiting his own endeavors, Lucas also hid this number throughout a number of subsequent films.

In The Phantom Menace, it’s on the back of a droid that has a comical run-in with Jar-Jar.

In Attack of the Clones, it appears on the back of a pilot’s helmet.

In Revenge of the Sith, CC-1138 is the numerical designation for Commander Bacara.

In A New Hope, 1138 is the cell block number that Luke Skywalker claims to be transferring Chewbaca from.

In the Empire Strikes Back, the following order is issued: Send Rogues 10 and 11 to Station 3-8.

And in Return of the Jedi, the number appears on another helmet.

So, how does Lucas tie into tonight’s conspiracy theme? I believe that he’s conspiring to destroy the Star Wars franchise. I’m not alone on this. Most of the Internet will back me up.

You can find other Easter eggs at www.eeggs.com. You might want to save the site for offline browsing, though, as it will probably be unavailable on the 22nd.

So, does anyone in the studio have any survival plans they can talk about or any Easter eggs they can disclose?

As for me, I’ve made pretty good friends with my egg-bot. I’m hoping he’ll put in a good word for me…

That’s it for your Judgement Eve Easter Egg Explanation and that’s that for BarretTime.

Allright.

With the last round of Spring Break vacations now comfortably behind us, it’s time to start looking forward to other geeky goings on to help us get through the coming Texas summer.

And as much as it pains me to say, the best way to escape the Texas Heat may be to escape Texas as well. You’re first opportunity to turn the tables on the temperatures is the weekend of May 21st at the San Mateo Event Center in the Bay Area of California. The Maker Faire, the worlds largest Do-It-Yourself festival, is now in it’s fifth year and remains the premier event for grassroots American innovation. Aimed at both the lone geek and family alike, the fair is a showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness as well as a celebration of the Maker mindset.

Hit www.makerfaire.com for details on this event, as well as the other Maker Faires taking place in Detroit and New York later in the summer. The Motor City Maker Faire takes place on July 30th and 31st, and the NYC Faire takes place September 17th and 18th.

If you’d like to effect an escape a little closer to home, you can indulge in some actual escapism June 24th through the 26th at Apollocon 2011, Houston’s Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Conference. Complete with panels, dealer rooms, an art show, a con suite, a masquerade, a media room, gaming, dance, live action role playing, a charity auction and a writer’s workshop, this year’s installment promises to be the best yet. There’s also a good chance that the con will host another Arduino workshop. I’ll definitely have more information on Apollocon as June gets closer, but for now, you can surf to www.apollocon.org for your information fix.

If you happen to be OK with the Texas heat, but have issues with the humidity, the desert may be an option for you to feel the dry heat of hostile networks and white hot exploits at DEFCON, the world’s largest hacker conference. Moving to new digs at the Rio hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, August 4th through the 7th, it is home to the world’s most hostile network, The Wall of Sheep, the Hardware Hacking Village, and plethora of other puzzles, parties and activities. While I may not make the Maker Faires, I will definitely be attending DEFCON this year. And I have high hopes of enticing other Tech Bytes crew members to join me.

Hit defcon.org for more info on the event.

And if you’re locked down to the point where you can’t leave Houston, the Prison Reform Film Festival is happening this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Rice Media center. Hit theprisonshow.org for details and directions, but for now, that’s it for your deals at dodging those devilish degrees and that’s that for BarretTime.