Welcome to the Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative Association

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The Coop was founded in 2001 because at the time, no one offered DSL or cable modem Internet access in our neighborhood, and because the voice telephone service to the neighborhood is of such poor quality that it was (and is) not possible to get modem connections faster than about 26K bits per second. The Coop is a Colorado nonprofit corporation and is federally tax-exempt under 501(c)(12).

The Coop’s launch of service in 2002 was made possible only by loans from “angels,” neighborhood residents who chose to lend money to the Coop with no assurance the loans would ever be repaid. The Coop reached a milestone in the first quarter of 2004 successfully repaying (ahead of schedule, and with interest) all of the “angel” loans. The Coop is now debt-free.

via Welcome to the Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative Association.

A Slower Speed of Light | MIT Game Lab

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A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game prototype in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. Custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics code allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay. These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect red- and blue-shifting of visible light, and the shifting of infrared and ultraviolet light into the visible spectrum; the searchlight effect increased brightness in the direction of travel; time dilation differences in the perceived passage of time from the player and the outside world; Lorentz transformation warping of space at near-light speeds; and the runtime effect the ability to see objects as they were in the past, due to the travel time of light. Players can choose to share their mastery and experience of the game through Twitter. A Slower Speed of Light combines accessible gameplay and a fantasy setting with theoretical and computational physics research to deliver an engaging and pedagogically rich experience

via A Slower Speed of Light | MIT Game Lab.

Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

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Unfortunately, if a network starts to send out an announcement of a particular IP address or network behind it, when in fact it is not, if that network is trusted by its upstreams and peers then packets can end up misrouted. That is what was happening here.

I looked at the BGP Routes for a Google IP Address. The route traversed Moratel (23947), an Indonesian ISP. Given that I’m looking at the routing from California and Google is operating Data Centre’s not far from our office, packets should never be routed via Indonesia. The most likely cause was that Moratel was announcing a network that wasn’t actually behind them.

via Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works – CloudFlare blog.

When I figured out the problem, I contacted a colleague at Moratel to let him know what was going on. He was able to fix the problem at around 2:50 UTC / 6:50pm PST. Around 3 minutes later, routing returned to normal and Google’s services came back online.

Cloud Computing Needs to Embrace the Linux Model

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While a portion of the OpenStack community is committed to the “free” software model, numerous developers have embraced the software with the intention of using it as the foundation for a proprietary platform. While that could lead to some tension between those developers with differing philosophies, Engates views that as better than the alternative. “Is it better to have a proprietary stack with no alternative?” he asked. “Or is it better to have an open-source platform here everyone has the source code at some level?”

via Cloud Computing Needs to Embrace the Linux Model: Rackspace CTO.

Xbox team’s ‘consumer detector’ would dis-Kinect freeloading TV viewers

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The patent application, filed under the heading “Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User,” proposes to use cameras and sensors like those in the Xbox 360 Kinect controller to monitor, count and in some cases identify the people in a room watching television, movies and other content. The filing refers to the technology as a “consumer detector.”

via Xbox team’s ‘consumer detector’ would dis-Kinect freeloading TV viewers – GeekWire.

Smartphones to Use Half the Power as Researchers Claim to have solved Efficiency Problem

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Almost everyone who owns a smartphone would have noticed that whenever they stream videos or play games their device gets warm and starts to drain battery rapidly. Engineers claim that power amplifiers are to blame for this behavior and that these chips waste as much as 65 per cent of their energy. The professors Joel Dawson and David Perreault, through their startup Eta Devices claim to have solved this problem with a new power amplifier design.

via Smartphones to Use Half the Power as Researchers Claim to have solved Efficiency Problem – ParityNews.com: …Because Technology Matters.

The new technology, dubbed asymmetric multilevel outphasing [PDF], is basically a super fast electronic gearbox that would select the best possible voltage to send across the transistors that would minimize power consumption. This process is done as many as 20 million times per second.