Centroid.EU Blog

My Compression Algorithm doesn't work

May 2nd, 2013

I have done some tests with a document I wrote in 2010 called my-compression.txt found on my /public stash. Well I came to the conclusion that there is too many collisions to give a definite answer on a compressed segment of 38 bytes. Too bad. I'm still hoping for a compression algorithm that can be re-compressed, thus ending all bandwidth and volume problems. But it's just a dream, it seems.

0 comments

---

The cravings are bad...

May 2nd, 2013

I crave chatting on IRC. This tells me I was addicted. But I'm gonna beat the addiction, I have considered writing a program that simulates IRC with people randomly talking about cameras and throwing numbers around (camera model #'s) that I don't know. In fact a lot of the "trash" talk I can probably do without, in the last few years it got especially trashy as people lost a sense of purpose (in my opinion) why they were there.

0 comments

---

OpenBSD 5.3 released, 3 hosts upgraded

May 1st, 2013

Today was network rearrangement day and upgrade day. I have upgraded mars, jupiter, and luna. I didn't upgrade uranus yet because I want to figure out some weirdnesses with it.

I now have ipsec'ed tunnels going from luna, jupiter and uranus to mars and mars acts like a router. The ipsec'ed tunnels protect the wifi bridge which are encrpyted too so I have extra encryption. More later.

0 comments

---

Why would a provider get rid of flatrate?

April 29th, 2013

Recently Deutsche Telekom announced that they are getting rid of their flat rate for DSL. I've been giving this some thought, around discussion, and here is what I've noticed:

• DT is offering TV and voice over DSL both of those services are not counted against the cap limit of 75 GB. In a way this is to prevent other TV over IP or voice over IP providers from being an alternative because people will be capped pretty quickly if they get TV from the United States (as an example).
• I've thought perhaps they want to lose customers, a very ridiculous thought but who knows?
• Back in the days of the German Bundespost, telecommunications were strictly controlled by a non-free market, perhaps elements in DT want such control back
• DT is afraid to shed jobs and thus pushing restrictions on the users, which will save them ultimately

These are some thoughts of mine that make me wonder. It is definitely an attack on freedom and net neutrality in my view. I'm having trouble convincing my parents to switch for what it's worth. At 15 GB usage last month they aren't affected they say and they say other providers will follow suit. I think that's not correct but we'll see.

0 comments

---

Taking a vacation from IRC

April 28th, 2013

I joined efnet in 1995 or 1996 as a way to get over my MUD addiction. Today I decided I'm going to take a vacation from it. How long I don't know but if it's forever then it be forever. Is IRC dying?

0 comments

---

What DT is doing wrong

April 26th, 2013

By cutting the flatrate in Germany Deutsche Telekom has left not many options on the table for its customers but to leave and seek providers elsewhere. They say that three percent of all users use a volume worth 30% of the entire traffic going through its customer links. That may be true, but noone has ever complained about it before, in fact people like subsidizing the heavy users, because sometimes they too do more downloading than ever before. So what DT is doing wrong by cutting the flatrate is that they aren't offering upgrade packages to existing capped bandwidth. Pretend you use up 75 GB and are capped down to 384 Kbit/s, other than email nothing else really works at that point. Telekom is not offering a "75 GB for 25 euro" package upgrade of sorts so that you can continue downloading. And this is a real crime as seen from a consumer perspective. I think Telekom is in the process of mismanagement.

Other ISP's that (I think) are good:

• QSC
• M-Net(mostly in Bavaria)
• NetCologne(mostly Cologne area?)

Most of these are mid sized businesses with aroudn 250,000 customers each, they could use those 3% from the Telekom in my opinion. I invite your list of good providers in Germany in the comments.

0 comments

---

Saturn in Libra (close to the moon)

April 25th, 2013

I recently found a screenshot of Saturn in 2010. Back then it was in Virgo at roughly 11:53:54 Right Ascension now it is at 14:26:22 Right Ascension in the constellation Libra. This means that in 2 years and 327 days (1057 days) it travelled 2 hours, 32 minutes and 28 seconds on a clock which is roughly 10.5% of a full revolution of sun. Does this match when wikipeida says that saturns year is 29.4 years or 10,759.22 earth days? 1057 / 10.5 * 100 = 10066 days. Pretty close approximation indeed. Seems Saturn is still in the heavens like usual.

0 comments

---

1 month left for goldflipper.net

April 25th, 2013

I got goldflipper.net in 2010. It served me for three years, but I have to give it up, I simply don't want to keep it. Over the course of these three years I have given out the following subdomains to people on IRC:

• ted.goldflipper.net
• uppland.sweden.goldflipper.net

I hope they didn't get me in trouble by usage, but I trust they won't. So there is a month left of this then it's over.

0 comments

---

Network Rearrangement Next Week

April 25th, 2013

In a week is May 1st. That means OpenBSD 5.3 will be released and I'm going to have to upgrade 4 computers. I'm also going to repurpose Mars my MacPPC computer. It will become a tunnel host so that I can use IPSEC across my wifi link. I've created a small map for this:

This will be in effect for 1 year or so, and then I will retire Mars. So this is likely going to be its last upgrade. So what will come of Mars in 2014? I already wrote about it last year. Instead of retiring Jupiter I think I'll keep it another year and I'll just get a Mars replacement called Venus. Venus will likely be a Soekris computer with an Atom processor.

0 comments

---

Germany's Deutsche Telekom starts a 75 GB Cap on DSL

April 23rd, 2013

Germanys Deutsche Telekom has put a cap on DSL up to 16 Mbit/s. 75 GB a month. My parents are on DT and I think I'm going to move them off, how I do that will be a bit hard but not impossible. I'm planning on switching them to SIP completely, if they agree. Looking at my last months stats at another flat free provider I used a bit more than 75 GB (around 90 GB), so what DT is doing is not right. I'm sure many people are going to debate this, and here is my advice if you're on DT. Switch providers.

0 comments

---