Jason’s Random Thoughts

How much would you pay for a 3.0 Mb/sec DSL connection?  $50?  $100?  $300?

This is the question that some families and many net users will be asking shortly as Telus seems about ready to start charging for usage past their monthly limits.  The bandwidth limits are nothing new but, unlike Shaw, Telus has never made a real fuss over people who have excessive amounts of traffic.  In the last three years my monthly transfer has been between 140 and 210 Gigabytes.

Shaw used to suspend my service when I was 10 GB over limit, while the worst Telus has ever done was send me an email asking that I slow down.

I share my internet with a few others and two of us are heavy downloaders.  The situation is the same for two of my neighbours who have kids between the ages of 14 and 20.  The advantage that I have over my neighbours is some centralized network storage that allows the people I share with to enjoy some of the same things that we all download.

So why the sudden change?  Well, after a quick discussion with someone at their customer service centre, it seems that a very high number of users are moving more than their allotted bandwidth.  So, in an effort to both bring usage down to managable levels and make a buck, Telus has decided to start charging for excessive usage.  And to think, I just got my connection issues solved ….

So it looks like many of us will soon be asking ourselves just how much some of our activities are worth.  Come the end of the month, would we really want to risk paying $2 to download episodes of Daily Show or Colbert Report?  Would we be willing to pay that rate to play online games such as Pangya or some MMORPG?  Just how badly do we want to download that new album that’s available?

It might be time to start looking for open WiFi connections again ….

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I’m impressed.

After 200 posts, this site has gone from being just a small pet project to something I look forward to updating daily.  In October of last year j2fi.net started on a small Synology DS-106 NAS device, and was replaced by a proper webserver shortly after Google and Yahoo started hammering that little box like a loan-shark teaching a dead-beat why it’s good to always pay your debts.

At first this was supposed to be just a small site for family and friends to come and check out the image galleries.  While travelling I would put up posts on my events and pictures from the day.  And, of course, when something in the news bugged me I would try and rationalize it in some form here.

That was the idea, anyways.

While much of this is true, I’ve also stretched to discuss things like network storage devices (which seems to be the key draw to this site according to my reference data), SQL Server, space technology and other scientific tidbits, interesting documentaries and just about anything else that tends to make this site appear to have no common theme … something we’re warned about when starting a blog.

Regardless of all the rules and suggestions that I’ve read in the last eight months regarding the do’s and don’ts of blogging, I enjoy the diversity of this site.  From educational discussions to complete rants that often make me appear completely irrational (until someone corrects me), j2fi.net has allowed me to express my tiny voice along with the millions of others that grace the internet.  While I doubt there will ever be any great truth written on here, I hope that some people can find value in what I have to offer on various subjects.

But this is what blogs are really for, right?  It’s our inherent need to communicate with others that drives us to start these pages.  Some people have multiple blogs, each focused on a particular subject.  These people often have a great deal to offer and share, which explains why their net traffic is so incredibly high.  The remaining millions have sites with no particular focus, but instead covers a range of ideas, thoughts, prejudices, insecurities, and everything else that makes us who and what we are.  This is the power that lies within blogs.

For the last decade, I’ve been communicating with people all over the world through IRC.  A text-based real-time chat application that allows users to discuss things in channels, or individually.  What’s great about this is that I’ve learned quite a bit about the world around me.  The people that make up the various nations all around the world.  I’ve learned that people in Germany are no different than in Canada.  People in the middle-east are just the same as you and I.  No matter where we come from, we all have similar fears, needs and desires.

Our blogs are like static pages of who we are at a point in time.  Like the paintings found on cave walls, what we write will be our personal impression on the world.  In a thousand years, our texts will still be found in an archive on some ancient optical disc.  A future generation will look back and identify with what we have to say on some rudimentary level.

We are a social creature with a deep desire to hear and tell stories, be they personal or professional.  So this blog, like the millions of others, is my attempt to tell the world “I am”.

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DTX, anyone?

With the fast approaching need for networked home storage, and the desire to house these devices in ever-smaller casings so they hide better in the closet, Gigabyte has announced plans to release the first mini DTX motherboard.  Codenamed “Churchill” (after Sir Winston, perhaps?), this motherboard will be catered towards the home server market and acts as a base for AMD’s Live! Home Media Server platform.

This board will support AMD’s Socket AM2 Athlon 64 and Sempron processors (single and dual-core, no word on the Phenom yet), and makes use of a relatively cheap SiS north and south bridge.  With 8 USB ports and six SATA I spots (5 internal, one external), there’s plenty of room for growth.  What I really like about this is that Windows Home Server is going to be a great platform to run on this board.  Other NAS options such as FreeNAS and OpenSolaris would also find many advantages with this tiny little board, and the potential power that it offers (both of these are great solutions for those who might want to share files between Windows, Mac, and Linux).

Mini DTX is roughly the same size as mini ITX.  What makes this board more appealing than the ITX counterparts is the ability to use desktop-PC processors, and the fact that the mounting brackets will work in most cases ranging from mini ATX to full sized ATX.  The single PCI slot is great for people who want to have a real RAID card in place, or perhaps a SATA II card to replace the slower first generation connections.  I would think that since most media streams fine over a 54 MBit connection (802.11g), the first generation SATA connections would be fine for starting users.  People that need a bit more performance from their servers are typically resigned to the fact that they need to spend more to quench their thirst for speed and availability.

Gigabyte expects to release this board sometime in July, and pricing has not yet been determined.  For anyone who’s been planning on building a small home storage server in a small form factor box, this could be a pretty good launching point.

Now if they were to make one on an Intel platform ….

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China has set two more ambitious goals for it’s space program this with with the announcement of an unmanned lunar orbiter set to fly later this year, and a probe to Mars in 2009.

The lunar orbiter, scheduled to launch in the second half of this year, will take 3-D images of the moon’s surface.  This is the first part of China’s lunar landing mission which is slated to occur between 2020 and 2025, right around the same time as NASA plans to return.

An unmanned landing on the moon is expected in 2012 by a six-wheeled rover that is currently under development.  This little robot is expected to have a nuclear power source (rather than a rechargable battery like the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity) which means that it will have one heck of an operational time.  Considering the amount of piracy that comes out of that country, I’m wondering if this machine might be little more than an Opportunity with a nuclear reactor.  While this wouldn’t surprise me, I would be curious to know NASA’s take on such a revelation.

China’s mission to Mars is going to be a joint venture with Russia, and is expected to launch in October of 2009 according to the Shanghai Space Agency.  This mission was first signed back in March, with China contributing the probe and Russia providing the landing vehicle (Phobos-Grunt).

Just to add complexity to the mission, Phobos-Grunt is designed to take rock samples from the Martian soil and return them to Earth.  Hopefully the samples will not be contaminated upon entry into the atmosphere, as this could provide a few more clues about the Red Planet’s history.  What I find odd, though, is this return to Earth.  If China were to send more nuclear-powered machines to Mars, then these robots could be designed to run semi-autonomous and carry an array of specialized instruments.  This could prevent any unwanted contamination of the samples and allow the scientific community at large more access to the Martian topography.

Perhaps with this undeclared race to learn more about our closest celestial bodies, NASA can be granted more funding in an effort to complete large hurtles before the Chinese.  This could be the next classic battle between East and West.

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Over 70 percent of the Earth is covered in water, leaving just 30 percent solid land for the six billion humans and countless plants, animals and insects to share.  For the past five thousand years, most of the metals and raw materials that we’ve collected has been from the land.  Gold, silver, iron, zinc, nickel … all of these have been found in relative abundance in some parts of the world, and all on land.

With the existing quantities found on only 30 percent of the globe, it would only make sense that in the ocean depths there would be more.  However, I am concerned that in exchange for these base metals, we could seriously damage a little-understood ecosystem on the bottom of the oceans.

Nautilus Minerals, a Vancouver-based mining company with a focus on offshore strip-mining, is currently exploring the potential for gold and copper deposits off the coast of Papua New Guinea.  Their Solwara Project is currently only in the “exploratory stages”, meaning that the project is still being investigated, and a few core samples will have been collected while the topography of the region is better mapped and studied.  But I’m wondering if we (as a species) should be collecting our resources from the oceans.

Already we’ve devastated fish stocks, introduced high levels of pollution to the waters, and interfered with the wildlife enough that their world will never be the same.  Should we now strip mine land that we cannot easily see in search of minerals that can be used in manufactured goods?

I really like the fact that Nautilus Minerals is paying attention to the underwater environment as best it can, and even brought several marine biologists from respected institutions such as the University of Toronto and James Cook University, but I fear that despite everyones best intentions, the fragile world down below could be damaged in ways we never envisioned.

The primary location of interest includes several areas rich in hydrothermal vents.  These areas are rich in sulfur and other minerals, and they also contain some of the least understood plant and animal lifeforms on the planet.  Some of the creatures that call this area home live in waters exceeding 350 degrees celcius.  On top of that, the top layer of the ocean floor is typically very nutrient-poor.  Strip mining the land would mean pulling that soil up to the surface, where it would then be sorted.  Minerals of worth would be kept, while the remaining soil and muck would be sent back to the ocean.  With the soil effectively “tilled”, quite a bit of nutrient-rich dirt woud be sent down.  This could cause huge amounts of algae-bloom to occur, which would drastically change the environment for local fish stocks.

Mining the ocean in international waters is highly regulated by the UN, but mining in territorial waters is only regulated by the country pertaining to that area.  To what level will these countries go in order to preserve the oceans?  Will some poorer countries even consider the potential ecological damage that could be caused if a mining organization arrives at their door and offers millions for the rights to mine their oceans?

Nautilus Minerals, and other companies like them, are exploring ways to both collect the minerals that are in high demand while also preserving these underwanter ecosystems as best as possible.  My biggest fear is that despite our best intentions, we’re going to make a mess that could have very broad unforseen circumstances.

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