P2P Hard Disk System Warns of Tsunamis 192
An anonymous reader writes to mention an article on NetworkWorld about a free software application that detects Tsunamis by listening for vibrations in the hard drives of computers. The peer-to-peer network uses the technology that allows HDDs to keep read-write heads on track, and passes the information to a network for analysis. From the article: "If an earthquake that could lead to a tsunami is detected, the supernodes inform the other nodes. Computers running the client software and connected to the peer-to-peer network can then warn of such events. The software is able to provide such warnings because the seismic waves produced by earthquakes travel at about 5,000 kilometers per hour, while tsunamis move much slower at 500 to 1,000 kilometers per hour"
I like it in principal (Score:5, Insightful)
I like helping people.
I don't like Windows only java clients which include dll files (they say on the front page its java based, but then on download page you see Mac OS X and Linux version in preparation. I think the DLL is going to pretty much stop all that.
I don't like running random programs accessing none standard data from my harddrive without knowing exactly what its looking at and what happens to my drive if its not got the required capabilities.
There is no technical information about this program or what it actually examines on a harddrive, coupled with the crypto java code buried inside the package (look in bcprov-jdk14.jar\org\bouncycastle\crypto) makes me nervous.
Negating all that it looks cool and if the technical aspects are cleared up I will try it.
I wonder if this functionality could be used to give any standard laptop a similar alarm feature as on the latest macbooks?
Re:I like it in principal (Score:5, Informative)
-Em
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Of course, much better products exist for PC based weather data collection, but generally aren't the subject of many people's christmas lists.
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Well folks, it's either 180 degrees Farenheit in Boston, or one of our ABC(TM) Action-News(TM) WeatherSpotters(TM) is crunching a lot of data on his laptop right now.
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Probably gathers "scientific" data too... (Score:2)
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1) Need a dll but know about a tsunami, pretty good i'd say
2) no dll, hence no working software, no tsunami warning, could work against me..
the choices, what should i do.. sigh..
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3) buy an alarmclock with EAS (used to be EBS, emergency broadcast) feature (set you back US$15)
or
4) download one of those WeatherBug spyware thingies for your windows tray (at least they only track your web habits). They actually pool EAS.
or
5) move AWAY from the sea; go live in CO, WY, NE, KS, even UT.
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I think I would rather die in a Tsunami than live in any of those places.
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Just because I don't normally advertise the fact nor make use of my bonuses doesn't mean I don't pay to play.
Re:I like it in principal (Score:5, Funny)
Come on man, it's not like we haven't all played little tricks like that and accidentally destroyed the entire universe. Just own up to it.
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Re:I like it in principal (Score:5, Informative)
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So it detects people playing Quake? (Score:2, Funny)
April 1st already? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:April 1st already? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, hard drives capable of stuffing a billion bits per square centimeter and needing the ability to position the head above each one separately triumph. And you know what drives hard drive development ? The need for inexpensive record space of course. And what causes this need ? Pirated movies, games and music.
In other words, piracy saves lives.
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Does this mean that pirated full bandwith HD streams could also detect the gravity waves from our sun as it marches inexoriably towards sprnova (or whatever the hell the spelling of the week for that site is).
-nB
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Re:April 1st already? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the title read "PSP Hard Disk System Warns of Tsunamis". Boy, Sony is sure pushing the envelope on hyping the Playstation Portable! Imagine how many more disasters the PS3 could avert! Too bad they're only making a million in their first run.
Solomon
Sooo.... (Score:5, Funny)
(of course I didn't RTFA, I'm just trying to avoid work this afternoon by wandering around making incoherent posts)
Re:Sooo.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sooo.... (Score:4, Funny)
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false warnings (Score:3, Insightful)
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A quick look at IRIS [iris.edu] will confirm that, out of 334 earthquakes in the last 30 days, 6 had tsunami potential and there were no reported tsunami. I was quite interested in tsunami after the boxing day quake, and was preparing to help an open source project that fizzeled. The reality is there are enough siesmometers to analyse all ready, what's need is several fold,
one problem is geopolitical, many countries ignored the established warning systems because they were r
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Remote villages usually manage alright with tsunamis (provided there is high ground nearby; if there isn't, a warning system isn't going to do any good anyway), for a couple of reasons:
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"Oh no, I have just hiked up the hill for nothing, again."
VS
"Oh no, a giant wave has, without warning, violently pushed an 18 wheeler through my wall and onto my head."
Cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how many simultaneous reports it takes to trigger it.
OLPC? (Score:2)
Yes, not all that useful (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. The problem with this project is that the countries where computers are very common (say, the United States) already have effective tsunami systems. The IOC offers tsunami warnings [tsunamiwave.info] as well in most of the Pacific, and are extending their coverage. The problem is that the third world governments often have problems with disseminating the information, and it's these very same countries that also don't have a lot of modern computers with motion detectors. The places that have effective end-to-end tsunam
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Nothing is effective in 3rd world areas
But when we all get rid of our spinny HDs for solid state wonders, someone can start a recycling project where our old junk will save lives. Mebbe.
Shouldn't proper seismic equipment be used? (Score:5, Insightful)
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A system like this could even help with aid...how do you ask? If a aid company (like Red Cross) got a early warning they could then mobilize and deliver aid much quicker...IMHO the soone
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I agree (Score:2)
What about the random noise that could be caused by rushhour traffic past someone's apartment/office building? Or even just your furnace/air conditioner turning off and on?
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Random events are, well, random. You use statistical analysis to filter out the noise.
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The spread of harddisks would help though, since earthquakes tend to travel further than traffic noise
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Thought of another way, (and professional's can yell at me for my ignorance here,) if I go and jump up and down next to a seismograph, it's going to read something and that erroneous data must be filtered out. If I go and jump up and down next to my computer, it also might register false e
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If this Janet Jackson thing should happen again, it would be advisable to seek cover anyway.
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Not sure what Janets incident has to do with any of this? Do that many people get excited over Janet? Do that many people watch the superbowl on their computers?
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My question is: have it been tested really?
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Ideally, in a Star Trek eutopia, yes.
In the real world, one should compare the number of available hard drives to the number of available, fully equipped seismologists in order to determine which -should- be used.
Heheeheeee (Score:1, Funny)
Tracking (Score:2, Insightful)
What a wicked idea (Score:4, Funny)
In the name of Science, of course.
Error Message? (Score:5, Funny)
*** DISK ERROR ***
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]lee to high ground? : _
Re:Error Message? (Score:5, Funny)
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]lee to high ground? : F
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]lee to high ground? : F!
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]lee to high ground? : F dammit!
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]lee to high ground? : F!!! F!!!
<end transmission>
All together now... (Score:2)
Frequency of seismic waves (Score:3, Insightful)
Immediately we have electrical interference at multiples of 50Hz. If this is supposed to be a delocalised system eg, SETI@home running in geeks' houses we're going to have much more interference: kicking your computer, bass speakers, fans..
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No they don't. They are often sampled at those frequencies but the waves themselves are much slower.
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mac equivalent nearly (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.suitable.com/tools/seismac.html [suitable.com]
Does a similar thing. Once caveat: you can never touch the mac. So it's useless really but an interesting demo of the motion detectors. They are suprisingly accurate. Footsteps nearby show up for instance.
you don't understand how this works (Score:4, Insightful)
Does a similar thing.
No, not really. That application just shows a graph; this system collects and correlates data from many systems.
Once caveat: you can never touch the mac.
Again, no, not really. The system described (not Seismac) correlates data from many systems, and an earthquake will affect many systems. Your typing, jumping up and down, or even a big truck rumbling by, will not. Nevermind that earthquakes have a very charachteristic vibration, so individual nodes are unlikely to be fooled easily in the first place. The supernodes would look for correlation.
To really dumb it down: if an earthquake happens, PCs will see the same/similar vibration in an expanding circle pattern. Similar systems are used with microphones in some cities for gunshot detection- many of them can, with just a few 'listening stations', pinpoint gunfire to within a dozen feet.
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Strangely enough... (Score:3, Funny)
Needs to give feedback (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, to the commenter who was worrying that things like kicks or shifts to a computer would result in false alarms, that's part of why they're using a P2P network. By aggregating the results from many machines, you can toss out false alarms. Of course, if a bunch of people got together on IRC to coordinate times at which they'd all kick their computers, that could probably trigger it...
Re:Needs to give feedback (Score:5, Funny)
No problem- keep an eye on your bank account and credit card statements.
The Amatuer Seismologist (Score:2)
Free Seismology Programs for Windows: [binghamton.edu]
Seismic/Eruption, Seismic Waves and data retrieval. View earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in close to real time. Developed for the Geology Hall of the Smithsonian.
AmaSeis, a program to obtain seismographs from the AS-1 Amateur Seismometer. [jclahr.com] The AS-1 is based on a classic project from Scientific American's "The Amateur Scientist."
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Too bad... (Score:2)
False Alarms (Score:2, Funny)
Do you know how many false alarms my wife will set off when she's stomping through the house to yell at me? (you never said anything about not letting the kids play with Mr. Chainsaw, dear)
Or how many my coworker will generate as he shakes the freaking floor when he walks around?
Ooh jEeZ. HeRe hE cOmEs aGaIn
Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
But if that hurdle can be cleared, processed correctly the data will be very useful. Most objections Slashdotters are going to raise will be irrelevant. Local aberrations will be cancelled out at the supernode, because the aberrations will only appear at that one node. Simple interference at constant frequencies is also easy to detect and mask out with "Introduction to Signal Processing"-level signal processing.
Merging the data together is a bit more challenging but should be doable.
The only thing I don't see is talking about knowing where the machines are in the real world, which would be very helpful, and that may be coming later. The other thing is that the system probably won't work very well with a simple "IsEarthquake" signal coming out of the clients; the supernodes really ought to examine all the data from its clients and then decide if there's an earthquake. Otherwise, several correctly-timed local abberations could all look like "earthquakes", even with completely different characteristics, if all that is going to the supernode is "IsEarthquake". Of course, the real system may already have both of these things covered and the article merely oversimplified.
Upshot is, signal processing can do some very surprising things with data that seems to consist almost entirely of noise, if you have enough data coming in.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be curious to see if they could automatically tell you where you are, using only the vibration data from your hard drive. Given a month or so of data, they might be able to correlate major events in your data set with major events in other data sets from known locations, thus allowing them to derive your geographic location.
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Seems to me they could run the algorithm backwards a couple of times using a known seismic event along with a few machines in a known location and find where you are.
Oh no... something else to be paranoid about.
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Hell, if the porn sites know where I live, I'm sure this guy can figure it out too.
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Agreed, but I actually said that because of the opposite situation. I've seen self-proclaimed "skeptics" say that it doesn't matter what evidence in favor of some supernatural event you can produce, you won't convince them it's true.
That's not skepticism. A skeptic must be ready to adjust beliefs to future evidence at all times. I c
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That's not skepticism. That's dogma. Doesn't matter that it happens to be skepticism-ism dogma, still dogma.
I even warned you that I wasn't saying what you think I said!
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Scammity scam, scamiferous scam.... (Score:2)
And larger scams have bigger still, and so ad infinitum
Can anyone say "social engineered virus on a Slashdot scale?"
The Cycling Sketch (Score:2)
"'Ere! That swappable hard drive just ejected itself."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"It works! It works!"
Better use of P2P: a new media for emergencyalerts (Score:2)
Data mining the hard way (Score:2)
I can't *believe* the numb
Finding stolen computers (Score:2)
how does it ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought that all the attempts to connect IP to physical locations had pretty much died of non-maintenance, and impossibility of getting all the location information from ISP's in anything remotely resembling realtime?
that seems like an awful big hurdle to the operation of this thing to me...
has something changed?
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I seriously doubt not seeding will stop distribution of this.
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Electricity is available in a lot of places - as is some form of telephone system. Expense is not such an issue since it is talking about using devices already in use for another purpose. If it was a case of putting in somthing new you wouln't be using this - geophones are cheap since they are effectively 1920's microphone technology, the more expensive bit is getting the analogue signal (or a digitized capture) to where you want t
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Sure. Except: The number of households and businesses worldwide with high-speed DSL Internet connections has hit 26 million -- with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong leading the way. [zdnet.co.uk].
From the same article "The full top 20 looks like this: 1. SOUTH KOREA 2. TAIWAN 3. HONG KONG 4. Belgium 5. Canada 6. Denmark 7. Germany 8. SINGAPORE 9. JAPAN 10. Sweden.... "
Other data [oecd.org]
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And I've gotta say, if you consider South Korea,
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Of course the price isn't really excessive -- it's between 130 and 200 rmb per month -- but if your monthly salary is only 2000 rmb it might be expensive.
Still, I think there are enough Chinese computer geeks for this sort of thing to work, assuming the technology works.
Presumably the same is true of India. R
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OTOH, if you have an earthquake that is going to be felt byt he whole world, the follow tsunami will be the least of your problems!
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It's somewhat unlikely that multiple people in the same geographic area will all experience the effects of bean-dip and burritos within a few seconds of each other; You can pull useful information out of this data by averaging.