Matthouse

E-mail to Sen’s Bennet, Udall, and Rep. Polis

November 17, 2010 – 2:05 pm
I sent the following email to my US representitives... Now let me be clear, I'm not usually a bandwagon kind of guy, as I said in the message. I do value my privacy though, which anybody who knows me can attest to. I think airport security is important, but these procedures are going way too far. I can't figure out where everybody is politically on this one... The LA Times has an article that seems to be saying this type of stuff is OK, if done in the name of security. Mike Rosen discussed this as well today, saying this is far different than a strip search, and concluding that most reasonable people won't mind the intrusion. I find myself agreeing with the ACLU on this one, which is a bit strange. EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center is also coming out against this, ...

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Haloween display

October 26, 2010 – 9:41 am
I've been geeked out by the idea of Light-O-Rama ever since I saw this video, which was probably 5 years ago, maybe more: Well, I've finally done it... I bought some Light-O-Rama stuff -- two controllers in the PC line, software, and an adaptor cable. This is pretty much the minimum required to get anything working. In order to save about $70 per controller, I bought them in *kit* form, but with all the accessories (plastic enclosure, heat syncs, power cables, all asembly required). After a couple of long nights, I had two 16-channel controllers. Well, for "practice", I built a haloween display. I downloaded several of these sequences, and those required a bunch of extra work, but one I created myself, from scratch. Here's the finished product! Sturtz Haloween Display 2010 from msturtz on Vimeo. The audio isn't perfect, especially in a few spots on the first song. ...

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Going Solar

August 10, 2010 – 12:58 pm
As you may know, I've been interested in solar energy for a long time. Going Green isn't what does it for me, although in this day and age, thats as good a reason as any. Since we moved to a new house, there are a few reasons to seriously consider going solar: We plan to be in this house for at least 10 years We have an enormous amount (900+ square feet) of un-shaded, south facing roof, ideal for a solar array We have higher than normal power bills, partly due to our increased home size (more A/C), and partly due to our lifestyle (fish tanks, computers, etc). Power prices keep going up, especially now with tiered rates. We're about to have a new roof installed due to hail damage (thank you, homeowner's insurance) So when 1 Block Off Grid started another summer campaign, I signed up. 1BOG, contrary to what ...

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Consumer ISP tirade

October 6, 2009 – 12:05 pm
Last year sometime, I discovered through my day-job that Qwest DSL was hijacking DNS queries for non-existent domain names, and redirecting them to a search page.  For my day-job, this problem manifests itself as employees being unable to access corporate resources even when connected to VPN.  After about 3 seconds of troubleshooting (isn’t vnc great?), I found this: This innocent looking page is actually quite bad…  It has many implications – for starters, Qwest is almost certainly making money on this page, due to the search traffic.  The privacy aspects are chilling – who knows what information Qwest is passing along to Yahoo (the search provider), or what information they’re storing about what domains you mis-type (or what domains you type correctly, so they can advertise more accurately when you do make a mistake).  The whole thing scares the willies out of me. Thankfully, there’s a clever link in the upper right ...

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FCC tackles net neutrality

September 30, 2009 – 10:55 am
I just realized I haven't posted in ...  Well, a long time...  I didn't go out of my way to come up with something to post about, this just seems like something I should chime in on... One of the things Obama talked about while campaigning was reforms in the area of telecommunications.  I usually don't believe a single thing a politition says, but that goes double for when they're on the campaign trail.  Right, left, Red, Green, Blue, Purple, doesn't matter...  Most of them will say whatever they think will get them (re)elected.  You have to judge a person by their actions. Obama's new FCC chair recently proposed new rules regarding the neutrality of network service providers of all types, not just common-carriers.   In the past, they've had a "policy" on this, pretty much saying "net neutrality is good".  The new rules pretty much say that service providers of all types can ...

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Corporate laptops: Fix or Replace?

April 24, 2009 – 4:35 pm
My coworker Peter sent me this link to computerworld. It's about a study conducted about the cost of replacing laptops after 3 years (which is usually the amortization schedule for computer equipment), or stretching their use out to 4 or even 5 years.  It's an interesting article, and makes some good points. There's two basic categories of computer (or for that matter any technology) purchases.  One school of thought is to get the cheapest available that will do what you need, because it will either break or become obsolete soon anyway, and you can just replace it when necessary.  This is the category in which most consumers fall -- spending as little as a few hundred dollars on a new computer every 12 to 24 months.  The other school of thought is to spend the most you can afford now, and buy the warranty to protect your investment for a longer term.  ...

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Oracle buys Sun

April 22, 2009 – 2:42 pm
I'm sure by now most people know that Sun was waiting for some knight in shining armor.  Sun's major asset is the huge amount of technology (and patents on that technology) they own, and their engineering capabilities.  Back in the day, every internet company owned Sun equipment, leading Sun to adopt the line "we put the Dot in Dot-Com".  However, they've been loosing money ever since the dot-com bust back in 2000, never quite being able to re-gain their footing.  This is mostly because Sun's core technology, proprietary servers and the patented operating system they run, are becoming increasingly irrelevant because of strong competition from open standards-based hardware and free software (x86 computers and Linux).  They have tried to branch out, releasing the x86 version of their operating system, as well as some other technologies, for free (but still not open), investing heavily in Java and other technologies that everybody find ...

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VoIP (Reducing Household Expenses)

February 6, 2009 – 3:44 pm
OK, so even though the economy does seem to be bottoming out (the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed its first positive week of the year today), I've recently been on a kick to reduce household expenses.  So far, this includes: Shutting down and winterizing the hot tub -- should save at least $40/month So that's it so far...  I have a couple other things I'm looking into, but it doesn't feel like there's that much monthly expense that we can easilly do without (that is, going without being a no-brainer). For a long time I have lothed Qwest.  Probably for many of the same reasons I don't like Comcast...  So I've been with Liberty Bell Telecom for several years now.  They have excelent customer service (real people in my state answer the phone when I call), and are cheaper than Qwest when compared side by side.  They recently increased their prices though, so ...

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Online ad tracking

September 2, 2008 – 7:41 am
Full disclosure:  I work for an advertising company, and have spent almost my entire career doing so.  With that said, nearly every product and technology I've ever worked on has been within the bounds of what I would call moral. This article entitled "Ad targeting based on ISP tracking now in doubt" is one of those technologies that should never have existed in the first place.  The company partners up with ISP's and, in exchange for a cut of the revenue, gets access to the users' data stream, along with the oppertunity to inject their ads when they can. I don't have any problem with ad-supported services.  What I have a problem with is ad-supported services that aren't free, or where the user doesn't have any reason to believe the service is, or could be, ad-supported, or any way to opt out of the ads.  It's like purchasing a brand new video game, ...

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Comcast caves, goes back to “normal” traffic management

March 27, 2008 – 1:26 pm
As a follow up to my previous post about Comcast, in which I jumped on the blogger bandwagon, Comcast seems to have had a change of heart. According to this press release, Comcast has agreed treat peer-to-peer file sharing protocols with the same priority as any other packets. The PR-speak has a lot of fluffy stuff in it, but that's pretty much what it boils down to. This is an important development, because it means Comcast saw the writing on the wall, both in backlash from its customer base (which translates directly into lost customers), as well as the impending reprimand (or worse) from the FCC. Apparently, net neutrality (wikipedia) still exists, which is extremly good news for the consumer. In short, it means that if you buy an internet connection from Comcast, they will no longer restrict what protocols you can use with it, but will ...

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