Author: Lorin Olsen

Pass the Jersey – For a Couple of Days

Lorin Olsen

Stage 9 is now in the history books. Michael Rasmussen launched off the front at 4km and never looked back. I am sure that his original plan was to sieze more “King of the Mountains” (KOM) points before the Alps. Mission accomplished. He took all the mountain points throughout the day – and just kept going. Apparently, he wanted even more glory. And he got it. He captured a stage win and a great deal of glory for CSC.
In the meantime, Jens Voigt and Christophe Moreau decided to take some glory as well. While Discovery controlled the peleton, CSC got one of its men off the front. By the end of the day, Lance would find himself 2:18 behind the new race leader (jens Voigt). Tomorrow will be a rest day for the riders. And Tuesday starts the big mountains. But Discovery looks good. After a tough Saturday, they took control on Sunday. And I think Lance is right where he wants to be.
Today was a great day for Rabobank and CSC! Rabobank got the glory of the stage. They had the lead cyclist throughout the entire stage. This meant a great deal of advertising time. As for CSC, they have the Maillot Jaune once again. With the current CSC sponsorship set to expire this year, TdF 2005 has been a great thing for Bjarne Riis and his merry band. CSC has certainly gotten its money’s worth in this Tour. CSC would be hard-pressed to abandon the team now.
With all the goodness being spread around today, there was one very large disappointment today. Dave Zabriskie, the rider who took the yellow jersey on the first day of the Tour did not finish the stage. He has never quite been the same since he crashed out on the TTT. That’s too bad. He was marvelous in yellow for three stages. While I am sad to see him depart, I know that we will be seeing him for many years to come. Bon chance, Monsieur Zabiskie.
-CyclingRoo-

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When Is WiFi Use Theft?

Lorin Olsen

By now, everyone has probably read the news of the man who was arrested for “stealing” an unsecured WiFi signal. As I have read the news stories, several thoughts have come to mind:

  • How can someone be guilty of theft when he was not on the land of the property owner? Indeed, the signal was being broadcast onto public property.
  • On the other hand, mail messages move through public space. The mere transit of public property does not vacate the right to have security of transit for paper-based mail. And what about phone lines? They sit on public property. [Actually the phone companies have been granted easements by public landholders – i.e., the government.] So standing on public property shouldn’t “permit” you to exploit a wireless signal.
  • How can someone be gulty of theft when the signal was not encrypted and the router was completely unsecured?
  • On the other hand, if I leave my unlocked briefcase in an airport restroom, this does not give anyone the right to open the unsecured briefcase. Of course, shame on me for not locking my briefcase. And shame on me for leaving my valuable documents in an unsecured container on public property. But the fact that a lock has not been enabled does not give someone the right to open the briefcase.
  • How can anyone own a wireless router and not take even the most basic of precautions? People don’t seem to realize that sensitve data is being broadcast beyond their property line.
  • In the past, I’ve done some “war walking” to demonstrate (in)security. Should I turn myself in?

But let’s put aside the ethical discussion for a moment. What should we do?
As individuals, we should secure the wireless infrastructure that we have installed. Here are a few basic steps you should follow:

  1. Locate the Router or Access Point Appropriately
  2. Change Default Administrator Passwords
  3. Change the Default SSID
  4. Disable SSID Broadcast
  5. Turn on Encryption
  6. Enable MAC Address Filtering
  7. Assign Static IP Addresses to Devices

In addition to these simple steps, you should also check out good security sources on the Internet. Tony Bradley has an excellent series of tips on the About.com network. Tony also has some great links to books and other articles.
Once you’ve secured your own systems, start thinking about those around you. As wireless consumers, we should urge the many wireless device manufacturers to simplify the process of enabling security. Linksys (a wireless hardware manufacturer) and Broadcom have created the SecureEasySetup program. Buffalo has endorsed the AOSS program. These two technologies were recently compared over at Tom’s Networking. I won’t recommend one program over another. But both programs do one simple thing: they make the process of enabling secuirty far simpler.
If you aren’t secured, what are you waiting for? Highly publicized arrests ought to alert you to the fact that some folks will use your wireless infrastructure – if you let them. After all, you have locks on your front door, don’t you?
-CyclingRoo-
*Update 7/8/05* – Declan McCullagh has a pretty good article about this subject at C|Net’s News.Com site.

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Greasemonkey – New Bits RSN

Lorin Olsen

The Greasemonkey team is hard at work on Greasemonkey 0.4. I am currently running a development build that works with the Firefox Deer Park bits. But the new GM release will have a number of very good features. First of all, the user can create a new user script via any outboard editor. This doesn’t seem like much. After all, most folks will just be installing pre-existing scripts. But for some of this, the new options will be quite nice. Second, the new build provides much more capability to edit/manage previously installed scripts. Finally, there is some new chrome stuff (UI improvements).
On the scripting front, Aaron Boodman (Greasemonkey developer) is spending a great deal of time to work through issues with Technoproxy – a GM script that will highlight nouns that have Technorati tags. It’s a fun little script that is terribly resource intensive.
-CyclingRoo-

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Deer Park Alpha Bits

Lorin Olsen

For the past few weeks, I have been dutifully upgrading my Firefox configuration with the most recent nightly builds. I do this for two reasons. First, I want to help with the QA process and provide feedback when problems arise. Second, I am just a sorry soul that loves to sail the stormy seas on a dingy! Seriously, I do this because I love seeing what’s new when it is at its newest.
This morning, I am seeing something at its newest. As noted earlier, I have been testing the automatic update facility in the Deer Park builds. And after upgrading this morning, I checked the About diakog on my Windows build. What to my wondering eyes did appear, but an Alpha 2 tag for my Deer Park reindeer. I haven’t seen any confirmations of this fact yet, but I am excited to see it.
So what’s new? Well, SVG is in the build. And the new automatic installer is in the build. And there have been a host of bugs squashed along the way. Since I am now seeing the tag in the Help dialog, I would expect a formal announcement sometime in the next couple of days.
-CyclingRoo-

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To Wear Yellow or Not to Wear Yellow…

Lorin Olsen

…that is the question.
After taking the race lead yesterday afternoon, Lance and his team reviewed the tapes of their stage win. And while they did have the winning time, DaveZ might very well have retained the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) for another day had he not crashed. In 1991, Greg LeMond had a similar opportuntiy to wear the yellow jersey after the crash of an opponent. Greg opted to not wear the jersey.
With such historical examples on his mind, and with respect for a former teammate in his heart, Lance decided that he would not wear the leader’s yellow jersey in today’s stage. Chris Brewer had this to say about Lance’s decision:

“Tell me what other sport is there where the grandest champion in the biggest race says “No thanks” to being designated the overall leader on the basis of sportsmanship? When you consider all the chest-thumping, look at me, look at me of most major sports, this is one lesson I hope all you moms and dads out there take some time to point out to the kids around dinner tonight – it’s that big a deal…”

I agree with Chris. In America, we are often treated to players and coaches who curse, throw tantrums, and sometimes even throw chairs when they aren’t treated as they think they should be. We see bench-clearing brawls with fans who throw beer at athletes. But now we are reminded what true sportsmanship is about. Lance earned the maillot jaune at the expense of another man. To honor that man and to reinforce the historical examples of cycling sportsmanship, Lance chose to demonstrate why cycling is such a different – and honorable – sport.
Unfortunately, Lance’s gesture was met with the confusion of the race organizers. They urged Lance to wear the jersey. They even brought out the rule book to let him know that he had an obligation to wear the yellow jersey. So Lance got a second chance to show why he is a champion off the bicycle as well as on it. Rather than be stubborn or arrogant (and refuse the race organizer’s request), he accepted their authority on the matter – and their decision. In the end, he wore the jersey after all.
Gosh, I don’t know who was right in this matter. But I know that Lance had every opportunity to focus on himself. Instead, he focused on others and on the sport he loves. What a great example to everyone – myself included. Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.
-CyclingRoo-

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Deer Park Update System Rocks!

Lorin Olsen

I have been using the various Deer Park nightlies ever since SVG got baked into the code. Well, the folks from Mozilla are at it again. Asa reports that the new browser update system can be tested. So like a good little minion, I’ve enabled auto-updates. The process for doing this yourself can be found here. I made these changes earlier this morning. And what do you know? The new update system has successfully updated my browser to the latest nightly build. Very nice.
This will prove to be an extremely useful feature for deploying secuirty updates. But I sure hope that MoFo has sufficient infrastructure in place. While I am sure that they can support the wonks who use the nightlies, they will need a whole lot more when the Firefox community switches over to Deer Park (Firefox 1.1).
-CyclingRoo-

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BBC Does RSS for TdF

Lorin Olsen

I love convergence. When things I love cross paths, I know that I’m in the right place. Well, I’ve been reading all the Tour de France news (for the past year). And I decided to hunt down new sources for stories. For whatever reason, I started to check the Eurpean sources. In general, European newspapers have a much more balanced coverage of the event. Here in the States, all we hear (from mainstream sources) is that Lance is winniong or Lance is not winning yet. So I wanted to read what is being said by papers that have a longer history with the sport.
So I ran across an article from Robbie McEwen on the BBC’s sports page. And while the various stories were pretty mundane, I noticed that our friend – the RSS badge – was visible on a whole bunch of pages. And better still, the RSS feed was for the entire sport of cycling. W00t! If you want to consume the RSS feed, it can be found here.
I love it when my technolgy interests cross into my other personal interests. It means that the technologies I love are becoming mainstream.
-CyclingRoo-

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Disco Wins the TTT

Lorin Olsen

I love le Tour. It’s always a drama that is played out before our eyes. Everyone expected Discovery to win – and win big. But Team CSC led – until the last few kilometers. And then Discovery kicked it up a notch – and Team CSC ran into troubles. Dizzy (Dave Zabriskie) crashed and finished w/o the team. Terrible break for him. In the end, Disco won the stage by a mere 2 seconds. That means that Johan’s team has won the TTT for the past three years. What an amazing accomplishment.
Oh, and Lance is in yellow!
Here are the new GC standings.
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) Discovery Channel 9.59.12
2 George Hincapie (USA) Discovery Channel 0.55
3 Jens Voigt (Ger) Team CSC 1.04
4 Bobby Julich (USA) Team CSC 1.07
5 Jose Luis Rubiera (Spa) Discovery Channel 1.14
6 Yaroslav Popovych (Ukr) Discovery Channel 1.16
7 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) T-Mobile Team 1.21
8 Benjamin Noval (Spa) Discovery Channel 1.26
9 David Zabriskie (USA) Team CSC
10 Ivan Basso (Ita) Team CSC
-CyclingRoo-

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19 Gigajoules; What’s a Gigajoule?

Lorin Olsen

19 gigajoules was the amount of energy which resulted from the terminal impact of the Deep Impact probe. But how many of us remember what a gigajoule is? Hearing this number reminded me of Doc Brown saying that the DeLorean needed 1.21 gigawatts of power in order to initiate time travel. As we all laughed at Doc Brown and his horrid pronunciation of gigawatt (he said “jig-o-watt”), most of us wanted to know just how much power that really was.

Well, I want to know just how much force was imparted upon Tempel 1 this morning. From computer science (or from studying ancient Greek), we know that giga is the term for a billion. So a gigajoule is a billion joules. And a joule is the work done to exert a force of one newton for a distance of one meter. OK. Now that we have that in our minds, let’s look for some common point of reference. According to the Online Unit Converter,

1 gigajoule = 737562149.3 foot pounds, or
1 gigajoule = 372.506136111 horsepower-hour

So the NASA impactor exerted the same amount of force as over 6700 horses could exert over the course of an hour. The pre-impact estimate was that this impact would result in a crater as big as a professional football stadium.

So why do we fling objects into space and aim them at unsuspecting comets? Well, we want to know whether these things are rocks or just dirty snowballs. We will learn that as the data is analyzed. But until thne, we have learned something very important. Tempel 1 is not shaped like a peanut. It’s more like a banana. 😉

-CyclingRoo-

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19 Gigajoules; What's a Gigajoule?

Lorin Olsen

19 gigajoules was the amount of energy which resulted from the terminal impact of the Deep Impact probe. But how many of us remember what a gigajoule is? Hearing this number reminded me of Doc Brown saying that the DeLorean needed 1.21 gigawatts of power in order to initiate time travel. As we all laughed at Doc Brown and his horrid pronunciation of gigawatt (he said “jig-o-watt”), most of us wanted to know just how much power that really was.
Well, I want to know just how much force was imparted upon Tempel 1 this morning. From computer science (or from studying ancient Greek), we know that giga is the term for a billion. So a gigajoule is a billion joules. And a joule is the work done to exert a force of one newton for a distance of one meter. OK. Now that we have that in our minds, let’s look for some common point of reference. According to the Online Unit Converter,
1 gigajoule = 737562149.3 foot pounds, or
1 gigajoule = 372.506136111 horsepower-hour
So the NASA impactor exerted the same amount of force as over 6700 horses could exert over the course of an hour. The pre-impact estimate was that this impact would result in a crater as big as a professional football stadium.
So why do we fling objects into space and aim them at unsuspecting comets? Well, we want to know whether these things are rocks or just dirty snowballs. We will learn that as the data is analyzed. But until thne, we have learned something very important. Tempel 1 is not shaped like a peanut. It’s more like a banana. 😉
-CyclingRoo-

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