I think we have the capability of building a cellphone that is the size of a credit card, and about as thick as 3-4 credit cards put together. If we would use strip batteries plus an OLED, that could make it work. And I wouldn’t be interested in fancy games or the capability to customize the ringtones or to chat with my friends, etc. I just want a cellphone that’s thin enough and light enough to slip in my shirt pocket without seeing any bulge. I want a cellphone I can slip into my wallet or into an executive brief. The case could be made of magnesium allow or brushed aluminum. Now wouldn’t that look pretty cool?
Author Archives: Raoul Pop
Securing wireless networks
The business of securing wireless networks is booming. Everyone wants to go wireless, but are afraid of the seemingly poor security. I’ve read plenty of articles about companies who have come out with all sorts of approaches, such as client/server data encryption, special networking equipment, etc. I haven’t seen much news about a particular technology that could help us secure our wireless networking in a fairly easy to understand and implement fashion, by using GPS technology. Let me explain.
GPS technology has gotten to be commonplace these days. It would be fairly easy to come up with the hardware that can use this technology. But how to put it to work? Well, we’ve come up with some pretty good solutions for encrypting the data that goes back and forth between the clients and the servers. Where we’re failing is in limiting the reach of that data. We all know that wireless networks can’t be physically delimited. They will go through our walls and windows. That’s the clincher – if we could only limit how far it can go, we’ve got it made.
Well, I’d like to put forth one approach to doing this – and you’re probably already catching on, which is great! We need to come up with a hardware wireless access point or gateway that can act as a GPS transmitter. It will act as a central point, or antenna, and will broadcast its availability, along with GPS coordinates, to the clients. Here we can actually break this into two subs:
- We can program a map of our building or perimeter, into the wireless router/access point, and thus be able to allow or disallow clients to connect based on whether or not they are within our pre-determined perimeter. The clients would also need to have some sort of GPS functionality programmed into their wireless cards, so they can talk back about their location to the router. This, coupled with MAC filtering, would act as a wonderful physical barrier.
- We can come up with an additional hardware component – let’s call them perimeter delimiters – that we can stick (as guideposts) at the corners or our surface area that we want to cover. They would serve two purposes: would bounce wireless traffic back to the central router, and would determine whether or not a client that is trying to connect to the router is outside or inside our perimeter. This would eliminate the need of coming up with special wireless cards that have integrated GPS functionality. These “perimeter delimiters” would determine how far or how close a device is from the central router (based on the strength of the connection signal) and would then make a yes/no decision about whether to let that client connect or not.
Given that GPS positioning is fairly accurate (within 3-6 feet, at any rate), these methods would allow us to safely shut out unallowed devices from connecting.
You could say, yes, that may be true, but we still have a problem with those people would would listen in on our wireless traffic! Maybe, but I think I may have a solution for that as well. Let’s take these same perimeter delimiters, and let’s give them a different purpose. Instead of acting as wireless traffic mirrors, they would act as wireless traffic disrupters! We could let them be unidirectional antennas that would emit the opposite waveforms of our wireless traffic outside our perimeter, and will thus effectively cancel out the wireless traffic that goes outside our perimeter. This works along the same lines as radar jamming. Our perimeter delimiters would listen in on all of our wireless traffic in the area, then flood the external perimeter (through unidirectional antennas – which are the key) with the exact opposite waveforms.
Now let’s deal with data encryption. We’ve all seen that really expensive encryption hardware is not the answer. Just look at the Texas Instruments debacle that’s recently made the news with the car key chip. That’s not to say that we don’t need hardware encryption. We do, but we shouldn’t rely solely on hardware. I think we should also use software. Here’s what I mean. We now have all sorts of encryption methods: WEP, WPA, etc. The problem is that most of the hardware out there can only use one sort of encryption at a time. What we really need is the ability to come up with a different lock and key encryption method every time a device connects to a wireless router or access point. We can do this by first varying the encryption methods used for every connect, and also by varying the encryption methods used for portions of the data. We should also be able to insert bogus data inbetween our data bits, and by labeling them with a different key every time, allow the client and server to delete them out of the traffic and thus understand each other. We should also be able to vary the amounts of data we encrypt through a particular method, and the amounts of bogus data we insert between the real data bits. The router can come up with a particular ratio for all these combinations at the time of the connect. That’s what I mean by a lock and key method. We should also be able to randomly change how often the lock and key are changed while the device is connected to the network. By making multiple components of the encryption method random – and at random times – this makes it extremely difficult to listen in on our traffic.
Will this slow down the speed of our connections? Yes, but in some situations, it’s worth it. Ideally, we should be able to tone down the strength of our encryption on the home devices – and thus gain back our speed – but it should be coded in, just in case we need it.
Offset electricity costs through wind turbines
I live in a high-rise condo building, and during one of our building’s board meetings, the discussion arrived at the topic of reducing electricity costs. Immediately I thought about the possibility of placing wind-driven turbines on the top of our building. There is always a good breeze up there, and the electricity produced by the turbines could help offset the energy costs for the building. One of the board members promised to look into the matter, but so far, nothing’s come of it.
Perhaps the costs for the turbines are still prohibitive for many buildings, ours included. But I can see a market for this kind of a product, if the costs are brought down enough so that a cost-benefit analysis of such a solution can show its viability in the long-term.
Solving a part of the traffic and transportation problem
I can’t take full credit for this idea. A few months ago, I talked with a friend of mine who is a transportation specialist. His name is Chris Bennett, and the idea is really his. I think it’s important enough that others ought to know about it.
As I drove to work this morning and I passed a pothole in the road, what he’d said to me suddenly clicked. The way to solve the congestion problem on our road, and also to get extra revenues that can be used to fix our roads and keep them in top shape, is to institute a tax on using the roads. The perfect place to do it is at the pump, and I’ll explain why.
The most consistent measure of figuring out how much uses the roads is by how much gasoline he/she consumes. Sure, some cars consume more gasoline than others, but that’s fine. A gasoline tax would encourage people to think more carefully about a car’s consumption before they purchase it. A gasoline tax is the only way to properly charge for mileage and for gross vehicle weight.
Everyone knows that in general, heavier cars consume more gas. They also wear out the roads faster, because of their weight. A gasoline tax would automatically separate the people who have lighter cars and consume less gas from those who own heavier cars and consume more fuel. It would not only encourage more responsible driving by making people plan out their trips in advance and considering their vehicles consumption, but it would also generate extra revenues for the upkeep and improvement of our roads.
Sure, you may say, the money will be generated, but how will it be divided among the local, state and federal government? They each are responsible for fixing their roads. Well, this would be done according to road usage studies on each of those types of roads. Roads that get used the most would get the most money to get fixed. All of the roads in a specific metro area would be grouped into light, medium and heavy usage. A percentage of the total revenues would then be divided among the appropriate parties that are responsible for the upkeep of those roads. Incidentally, this is why I think charging people for using the roads (having tollbooths on the roads) is a silly way to generate revenues. Instituting a gasoline tax is the fairest way to distribute the payment responsibility among all the “offenders” out there: us, the drivers.
How not to treat your Betta fish
I have written this article with the hope of discouraging Betta owners from engaging in potentially hurtful practices when it comes to their fish. Bettas are treated quite casually and often abused. I believe they are much smarter than generally known (see article entitled The Underrated Betta Fish) and deserve better treatment.
The most important abuse that takes place is this: they are made to fight with each other in many countries, their owners knowing full well that they fight to the death. In the US and the more “civilized” countries, this practice is not as wide-spread, though what we have here is not a whole lot better. Here we sell Betta aquariums with clear dividers that are meant to house two or more Bettas in clear view of each other. This is supposed to enhance their appearance, because the poor things puff up their fins, thinking their territory is threatened. What few people realize is that this practice is very stressful for the Bettas. Although the fish are not damaged externally, and what I mean by this is that they don’t tear each other up, internally they experience the same stress. We all know what stress does to our bodies. Well, it has the same effect on Bettas. How would you like to live every moment of the day continually angry? That is what happens to them when they are placed in those sorts of aquariums. They feel continually threatened, and live in constant stress. Overtime, they get sick and die, whereas they would have had much longer and better lives if they were left to lead a peaceful existence.
Bettas are bred and transported in tiny little jars, and most of them never see a bigger aquarium, since they are also kept in small jars by their owners. This is an error, and it can be attributed to those people who say that Bettas are not pretentious, and that they’ve even heard of them living in the puddles left by horses’ hoofs somewhere in Southeast Asia. Just because Bettas can live in that sort of an environment doesn’t mean they like it. Fish love to live in large spreads of water, no matter what species they are.
Another issue is the cleanliness of the Betta aquariums. Just because Bettas can live in murky water doesn’t mean the average Betta owner can let the tank water get ridiculously dirty before they change it. What’s worse, some people actually believe that they can buy these sorts of Betta jars, where the poor thing is sandwiched in between the bottom of the tank and some silly plant growing above. I’m not sure who spread that silly rumor, but apparently they’ve said the Bettas need no food or fresh water when they’re placed in that sort of jar — and the rumor has spread! Apparently, the jar can be a fully self-contained, perpetual eco-system! What kind of a cockamamie story is that? I’d like to know what these people were on when they came up with this crud. Would you like to live in a tiny jar, surrounded by your own pee and doo-doo, and be forced to nibble on bitter plant roots when you’re naturally carnivorous? If you do, there’s something wrong with you. Bettas enjoy a nicely sized aquarium as much as the next fish. Don’t forget that while their origin is indeed from Southeast Asia, and they are commonly found in flooded rice paddies, their”aquariums” over there are quite large. They encompass entire fields! Yes, the water may be murky at times, and when the sun dries up the fields, they may shrink in size to little puddles, but that doesn’t mean the Bettas like to live that way all the time.
A mistake that people make is not spending enough time with their Bettas. Most of the time, they are thought of as ornaments to the room. That’s not how a smart fish can be treated. If they are continually ignored by their owners, the Bettas will withdraw into themselves, and will become loners. They will shy away from the owner when they are fed. The owner’s face next to the bowl will cause the fish to be frightened instead of happy.
Another problem I’ve found — and although it may seem minor, it does matter — is the size of the Betta Bits, the round pellets one finds in the pet stores. I’d like to know if the people who make those things have ever tried to feed them to the fish? They are much too big for their small mouths. My poor Bettas struggled to swallow them until I discovered that if I split them in half, it would make the job much easier for them. Why aren’t these things sized right? Bettas are not goldfish. They don’t have huge mouths. They are not the pigs of the aquarium; they are delicate little creatures, and their food ought to be tailor-made for them.
Do you know of other ways in which Bettas are shortchanged or worse, abused? Write about it in the comments.
Raoul Pop 