Author: Synetech

Firmware Upgrade Safety

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Updating firmware is still often a somewhat risky task. The firmware is the software built into a chip in the hardware that provides the low-level functionality (drivers are the higher-level software that provides more advanced functionality).

The problem with updating firmware is that if the update does not go perfectly, this can leave the device in an indeterminate state without the ability to even try again since the low-level functionality is needed to upload firmware to the device in the first place.

In the old days, flashing a new BIOS or CD drive firmware was quite risky and resulting in much “bricking” (rendering a device useless). (Technically, there are usually ways to restore a working copy of the firmware like the manufacturer did in the first place, by cracking the device open and connecting to special ports on the motherboard (e.g., JTAG). Not surprisingly, manufacturers have tried coming up with better, safer solutions. Yet, updating firmware, especially with untested or third-party firmware remains risky to this day.

This is silly because there are numerous ways to prevent bricking devices.

One method that some manufacturers have implemented (usually on motherboards) is to use two BIOSes on the board. That way, if the main one fails, then the user can hold a special key combination or short a specific jumper or some such to restore a copy of the non-writable ROM backup to the erasable one.

This method is effective and can even be adapted in another way. Instead of having two copies of the firmware, simply have two flash drives. That way, when you upload a firmware, instead of being written to the main chip, it is saved to the storage chip, then if and only if it was successfully uploaded, it is quickly written (“flashed” if you will) to the main one. This way, the device can easily detect if the upload failed and provides an all-or-nothing flashing experience (an atomic transaction/operation in database parlance).

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Limiting Login Attemps

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One common way to reduce the likelihood of an account getting hacked is to limit the number of login attempts and lock the account once the number of failed logins reaches some threshold.

This is a reasonable way to prevent brute-force, and even most dictionary attacks. The problem is that most implementations count each and every login attempt. When someone forgets their password or types it in incorrectly, they usually try again a few times.

If you limit the number of attempts, it should detect if the passwords are the same (or possibly even similar) since they are obviously not an attack, but rather the user wondering why their password isn’t working (for example, they may be typing in the password for a different account).

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The Airport/SimCity Paradox

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The Airport Paradox aka the SimCity Paradox refers to the fickle and inconsistent nature of human beings and how they are never happy regardless of the lengths one goes to in order to please them.

Years ago, I was playing SimCity. I built myself a nice little (obsessive-compulsively symmetrically) town and it was doing well. I pulled up the mayoral summary to see how I was doing with the citizenry. The report indicated that I was mostly pretty popular with the Sims, except that they were demanding (yes demanding) an airport. So I built one.

I let a little time go by so that the Sims could enjoy their shiny new airport. I pulled up the summary again and saw that I was still doing well and the Sims were mostly happy except that they were upset about there being too much pollution and demanding (yes, the Sims are very demanding) that I do something about it. So I opened the pollution graph to see where the problem spots are, and where do you think all the pollution was coming from? Yup, the airport. It was solely responsible for the pollution problem. I demolished the airport and the pollution went down but, perhaps not surprisingly, the Sims complained that they wanted an airport.

I loosed the Godzilla.

(Technically, in the case of SimCity, you can have an airport and low pollution by surrounding it with tons and tons of parks—I guess in Simland, it’s perfectly okay if children, families, and pets choke on jet fumes, so long as the parks absorb the pollution. The point is that humans are never happy and always demand more.)

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Don’t throw out your toothbrush… yet.

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It is common practice to replace a toothbrush after about three months. However, you can prolong the life of your worn-out toothbrush by simply trimming the bristles. You can trim them a little or a lot to get varying degress of hardness (in fact you could even trim a new, soft brush to make it harder). Even if you get a new brush, you can keep the trimmed brush on the side for dealing with those tough-to-clean moments when you need a harder brush to scrub away stubborn coffee or chocolate build-up. (If you normally brush hard, then remember to brush softer since the shorter bristles are already harder.)

One thing to note is that any contouring of the bristles will be lost by a simple cut unless you specifically cut it (which you can do however you like regardless of whatever contouring the brush originally had).

Keep in mind that wearing-down of the bristles is only part of the reason that you are encouraged to change your brush; the other reason is germs. After a while, toothbrushes tend to accumulate germs, especially for people who don’t take much care in keeping them clean. You can deal with this by putting the toilet seat down before flushing (duh), using a toothbrush cover (though you will want to vigoursly shake the brush dry before putting it on to prevent mold), keeping the brush in a medicine cabinet or even another room (do not use those brush holders where the brush is slid into a hole and the brush head comes into contact with the open, exposed base).

Rinsing it with boiling water once in a while is extremely helpful and when combined with trimming the bristles can extend the life of a brush by quite a lot. (Yes, toothbrushes aren’t exactly expensive, but why waste? More importantly, it’s hard to find a good, firm, scrubbing brush for those stubborn coffee stains and plaque splotches. Manufacturers usually only make soft and medium now, it’s getting hard to find hard brushes anymore.)

Finally, even when a tootbrush is of no hygenic use, it is still of use for cleaning. Brushes are the holy-grail of cleaning equipment and can make many cleaning tasks much easier than with a sponge, cloth, etc. In fact, toothbrushes are absolute gold when it comes to cleaning nooks and crannies. (Of course you will want to wash the brush first.)

It’s good to keep an old toothbrush in the toolbox or cleaning bucket.

Worn toothbrush from the side.Worn toothbrush from the top.
Toothbrush trimmed short.Toothbrush trimmed medium.
Two trimmed toothbrushes, one short, one medium.

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Tips for Enjoying Food More

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Before eating, you should always do two things:

  • Blow your nose
  • Wash your hands

It is obvious why you should always wash your hands before eating (though many still choose not to for some reason). But why should you blow your nose before eating?

Our sense of smell is closely linked to not only memory, but also our sense of taste. You can observe this by holding your nose while eating something. You will notice that the food loses most of its flavor and becomes quite bland. (You can use this “trick” to make eating undesirable foods or medications more palatable.) It turns out that we need to actually smell what we eat in order to fully (actually?) taste it. As such, if your nose is full of dust and dirt, you will not be able to smell as much of the food, and so you will not savor it as much as you can with a clear, empty nose that can inhale more odor molecules from the food. Of course, make sure to wash your hands after blowing your nose.

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Evolution Doesn’t Work Like That

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Most people have heard of evolution. Some accept it, some reject it, but either way, most don’t actually understand it. There is a perception that evolution means that all life will, with enough time, morph into some sort of “higher form”. For example, many people think that eventually humans will evolve to fly or ants will evolve to be monkeys and then humans. However, that is not how evolution works.

For starters, the idea of all “lower lifeforms” evolving into humans is flawed. It implies a sort of vertical hierarchy of taxonomy in which all life is sorted by its perceived superiority to ones below it (often with humans at the top). This is absurd; there is no such thing as one form of life being superior to another. If it were true, then should not birds be higher than humans since they can fly? Should not fish be higher than humans since they can live underwater? The fact is that each creature evolves to do well in its own environment, not reach a theoretical point of perfection.

Another problem with most people’s conception of evolution is that over time, they will become more and more advanced. Evolution is not an intelligent mad-scientist doing genetic experiments. It does not require creatures to become “better and better”; instead it only requires creatures to become good enough to survive long enough to pass on their genes. That is, if a giraffe is able to eat the leaves at the top of the tree to stave off starvation by having a slightly longer neck, then that is sufficient; it need not grow wings. If a fish is able to avoid being eaten by swimming faster, then that is good enough; it does not need to grow legs and take to land. It is like the old saying: I don’t need to run faster than the lion, I only need to run faster than you.

Just like how scientists prefer the term climate change to global warming because it makes it easier to avoid confusion, it is easier for people to avoid confusion by avoiding the term evolution which implies necessary change, and instead use natural selection which makes it more clear what is happening: creatures that are better able to survive can pass on their genes.

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Parallel Universes Don’t Provide Every Possibility

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The idea of parallel universe is certainly an amusing one. Not only does it provide a rich and fertile field for storytelling, but it is alluring to wonder about what one’s life might be like under different circumstances (the whimsical “what-if crystal ball”). However, there is a misconception on what parallel universes would actually be like.

People think that the idea of parallel universes means that every possible outcome could exist. This is (theoretically) true, but to a limit. What is not true is that in a parallel universe you are the opposite gender, or that there is a universe in which people are dogs and dogs are people, or you are blue, or a chair, etc.

The idea of parallel universes comes from the idea that for every decision, there would be two or more possible choices. More technically, it means that for every atom (or even sub-atomic particle), it can take on a different position or spin than what it did take in this one. While that means a countless number of parallel universes, it does not mean that in one universe, dogs evolved to be people and keep humans as pets or that you are 10′ tall and green since there is no combination of actual changes that could have lead to that.

In fact, while it is generally accepted that the number of parallel universes would be infinite, it may actually be finite. For one thing, there are not an infinite number of particles, so that is one limit. If the universe turns out to not be infinite in size, then that also puts a limit to the number of possible different permutations (configurations of particles). Finally, there is a practical limit to the number of infinitesimal changes to position or spin that a particle can take. For example, an atom could move 1m, or 1cm, or 1mm, or 1µm, or 1nm and so on; however there is a physical limit to how small a unit of distance it can move (at least as far as we currently understand). As such, there could be a practical limit to the number of different universes that can exist (though it would still be unfathomably large).

It might be better to add the term possible to the term parallel universes. When discussing fantasy ideas of worlds where everything is upside-down or underwater and such, it would be more appropriate to use the term alternate reality instead.

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Armageddon 2012… or not.

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It never ceases to amaze that a giant fabrication that is based on the tiniest sliver of truth can spread like wildfire, masquerading as fact. That many people are wondering if the world will end in December 2012 as “the Mayans predicted” is a great example of this. A lot of people think that the Mayans had predicted that the world would end in December 2012 which is why their calendar “ends” at that point. They hear something about this, then go online and look it up or see something on a sci-fi show about doomsday on the History channel that mentions some small factual detail, then they tell everyone they know about how the end is coming.

The fact is, that the Mayans never predicted that the world would end in 2012, nor did they even predict great change as some people like to “correct”. For that matter, their calendar does not actually “end” at that point either. And even if it did, so what? Do you expect them to have created an infinitely long calendar? We have to buy a new calendar every single year. Do people run around screaming that the world will end on January 1 of every year just because the calendar has run out? Of course not!

If you do a little research on the Mayan calendar, you will see that they do not use the same breakdown of time that we do. Where we use 7-day weeks, 30(-ish)-day months, 12-month years, 10-year decades, 100-year centuries, and 1,000-year millennia; the Mayans break their long period of time into smaller and smaller blocks where each block is 20 (for the most part). That is, 20 k’in in a winal, 18 winal in a tun, 20 tun in a ka’tun, 20 ka’tun in a b’ak’tun, 20 b’ak’tun in a pictun and so on (there are only 18 winal in a tun so that a year/tun is 360 days/k’in). The current date (March 24, 2012) is represented in the Mayan calendar as 0.12.19.19.4.8. On December 21, 2012, it will be 0.13.0.0.0.0. What’s so special about that? That’s like saying January 1, 2013 or 00:00am or 100,000 miles on the odometer. So the calendar rolled over; whoopdie-freakin’ doo!

Why then do people think that the world will end or pedants think that the Mayans predicted “great change”? Because there is a single, vague mention in a few surviving scraps of Mayan mythology at Tortuguero about how the current incarnation of the world was created on August 11, 3114 B.C., or 13.0.0.0.0.0. People have taken this to mean that once the clock hits 13.0.0.0.0.0 again, the world will once again be destroyed and a new one created in its place just as it was when the dinosaurs were wiped out and a new world grew from the ashes. This of course is ludicrous.

An apt analogy that most people are likely to understand would be one from the Bible. According to the Bible, God created the Earth and such, then x-number of years  later (let’s say 1,000), there was a great flood which wiped out most of the world. The survivors of the flood started life over, and likely marked time relative to the flood (e.g., years BF /AF)  just as Christians now mark time relative to when Jesus was (supposedly) born (BC /AD) or Muslims mark time as relative to when Muhammad went to Medina (BH / AH). Imagine how ridiculous it would be if you came along and said, hey, the flood destroyed the world and created a new one 999 years ago, so look out! because the world is going to end next year!!! The original survivors of the flood would likely roll their eyes at you.

The Mayans did not predict the end of the world on December 21, 2012, nor did they predict great change. They only thing they predicted was that they would need to turn the page on the calendar and maybe get some fireworks to celebrate their equivalent of Y2K.

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Windows Explorer Thumbnail View Limit

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When viewing files in thumbnail mode in Windows Explorer, there is a limit. In Windows XP, Explorer can only show thumbnails for up to 4,096 (4K) files. After that, files begin showing either a completely white image or the icon of the program associated with that file-type.

Which files are given a thumbnail or not is determined by the order in which they are displayed. For example, if a folder containing 5,096 files is put in thumbnail mode and the first 2,048 files are viewed, then End is pressed and the list is scrolled up, the first and last 2,048 files are given a thumbnail and the middle 1,000 files are left blank. (Of course if the list is scrolled around with the scroll-bar, then seemingly “random” blocks of files here and there may be left blank.)

(There may or may not be a limit in Windows 7 as well. A test will be done and results will be added.)

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Round Numbers

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Round numbers are  common, appealing, and easy to deal with. However they do not always end in a 0 or a 5. In fact, round numbers can take on all kinds of forms that most people would not think of. For example, a few round numbers in binary include 2, 4, 8, 1024, and 1,048,576. Most people would balk at these, but computer people feel quite comfortable with.

A number can be considered round in other ways as well. For example, a price of $9.99 is considered round because it has the same number across the board, and $123.45 is also round in that it is made up of a continuous sequence of consecutive numbers.

Numbers can also be round in terms of their geographic locations as opposed to their inherent magnitudes. For example, when entering a cooking time on a microwave, most people just enter an approximate time since there is usually no specific, to-the-second time prescribed. In this case, many people simply enter a round number such as 0:30 or 1:00. However 2:58 would also be round because it is a straight line down the middle of the numeric keypad, or 1:59 is a diagonal across the keypad. Even 1:06 is a round number if you enter it as 0:66. A time of 0:71 is round when entered as 1:11 and 83 seconds is round when entered as 1:23.

Most people think of round numbers as being evenly divisible by some factor (usually 5 or 10), but they can come in all manner of forms. They can come in handy too for example when negotiating a price for something. If you asked for $6,000 for something but they offer $5,000, instead of countering with $5,500, counter with $5,555.55. There’s a good chance they will accept and you will get a little more.