All Over The Map

Five Equations that Changed the World

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:51:44 +0000

Michael Guillen’s book “Five Equations that Changed the World” would have been a great book to read as a companion to the Calculus and Physics I,II,III ritual in most engineering and Science schools. The book details some of the non scientifc background and history around the equations. The five equations are:

Isaac Newton and the Universal Law of gravity
David Bernoulli and the Law of Hydrostatic Pressure
Michael Faraday and the Law of Electromagnetic Induction
Rudolf Clausius and the Second lay of Thermodynamics
Albert Einstein and the Theory of Special Relativity

If one were to try and include the Computer and the discovery of DNA what equations would we use to represent them. I would add 5 more equations that contributed most to the following.

The computer
The Laser
The Discovery of DNA
The Internet
Encryption/decryption and Compression

Maven a very useful implementation, can’t trust it yet.

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:10:37 +0000

Where code comes from is very important. As a developer or compnay you are utilimately repsonsibel for what you have provided your user. Recently I have been using Maven for some projects friends have asked for help on. I have always avoided use of Maven because I found the security model very weak. I would never deploy a production application using Maven without a rigorous audit of the jars it is using and by the time that is done you have lost the productivity gain. Let’s ignore what it could inject into your development environment. That was my view and still is.

How can I trust that the code I am getting is valid– Digests and trusting the people that run the repositories not good enough, need some an independent third party system.for me to ever use Maven to go from development to production without an Audit. Maven has the potential to inject one of the largest viruses in Internet History into the Internet IMO. One of the problems with all of the security models is that the security is only as good as the service provider in the end., so you need checks and process. Initially checks and processes slow things down until they are developed. What is preventing a disgruntled individual close to Maven from injecting a sleeper thread into a crtical say JSON library that one day wakes up and starts reading the disk on the servers it is on and unloading it to the internet. Even worse it does this at a very low level over several years so it is not really detected until massive amounts of data have been copied. As a professional developer there is a minimum due diligence one must apply to the components one uses to build something. This is no different than a Chef picking products for a meal. The blame game begins.

When Java first arrived there was quite a bit of discussion about trusting Mobile code I think the Mobile issue clouded things up and the Industry should have focused on code from a third party, mobile is practically the default case, trust and computing at a distance via delegation are the two issues. It is curious how know we are getting code from the Internet practically at the OS level produced by developers having dependency trees that they can’t even enumerate. See “Ultra-Large-Scale Systems Ultra-large-scale (ULS) systems will be interdependent webs of software-intensive systems, people, policies, cultures, and economics.”

Is the access to Maven Repositories Over SSL
Does the SSL certificate point to a document defining how the repository is managed and checked
Are the code segments signed
Is there a log file produced that relates where the jars came from and where the source is
Is there one developer that verifies that the source
What is the legal entity when of the jar files has a virus introduced by an Open Source programmer
What is the relative risk factor of an application based on the third party code and how it was put into the system
…. We all know how easy it is to present security issues, kind of like yelling fire or saying Sarbanes Oaxley

When I use Maven, I put all artifacts that an end user will run into my own repository and I will not use jars that do not have source that reproduce them, curiously proprietary jars don’t cause this concern for me. It would be nice if maven had a recreate system from source option and this option would produce all the documentation about the release, similar to ideas Richard Gabriel discussed in “Conscientious Software“. I am still concerned about the plugins that are loaded into my development system, I seem to have 100s of them. This has an issue also in that the source code that has been inserted into the repository does not have a history of where the change came from and who reviewed it. Do I really beleive that every open source change has been seen my more than one knowledgabel ethical person, no and that it goes into a secure trusted repository constantly monitored for fraud no. Hopefully I am wrong about all the above issues and there is active work on improving managing all the artifacts one needs to build an application. I would go as far to say that I would like to see this type of thinking in the Language.

Water Usage interface to House database

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:22:39 +0000

Doing an instrumentation experiment with our water consumption. Over the years I have put in a number of underground pipes, and I do the winter shutdown later and later every year. There is no meter on my well so I can’t really tell if the well pump is on or off for long periods of time. I also have no idea how much water we use. I am considering a computer controlled shutoff valve, or maybe a remote controlled power switch for the well pump to turn it off when there is abnormal usage. I picked up a Clark Model CLXC-20D-C-S and I am going to connect it today. I have not looked into the details of the output signal and how to interface it to some type of computer, something small like a Basic Stamp or maybe just get a board or USB device for one of the servers. If I were to buy a new house I would actually ask if you can get one with a built in web server with local instrumentation.

Leslie’s Pool Stores — Great Customer Service

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:22:25 +0000

The pool pump was making quite a bit of noise. I started the replacement process and decided to buy one at Leslie’s to avoid the shipping. I went to the store and provided the information. They had an open box so I took that one. The price was great, more on that later. I did that in April I got around to installing the pump in June. I replaced the pump and started the pump. Trouble — I was not able to get 10-30 PSI across the filter. I started to get concerned that I had not winterized and I had a leak. I happened to look at the pool pump labels and saw that it was 1 HP. I knew I had asked for 1.5 HP. I looked at the receipt and it was for 1 HP. No wonder it was so much less. I put the old noisy pump back on and it all worked but it was noisy. I tried to find parts or someone to replace it, not possible. Seems like they want you to buy a new one. I thought the world was getting greener and we were going to try to fix things instead of make new things. I gave up on the parts although the idea of taking parts from the 1hp and putting them in the 1.5 HP did cross my mind. I went to the Leslie’s store and spoke to one of the employees, who happened to be going into Aerospace, that made me very happy and he suggested I talk to the manager about it. I actually sent email to the customer support line and they were very helpful. The District Manager call me and she arranged for me to replace the pump. I paid the difference in price for .5 more HP and I am going to install it today. I know some of you are wondering about the other pump, I am sure they will honor the full warranty and make the buyer aware that it had been used for about 1 hour. One of the great things about Sears is that they always keep parts for some amount of time, It would be nice if Home Depot and other chains paid more attention to this and used companies that maintained parts. Often you have to buy a new one because they don’t have anyway of getting the part. I guess my time is cheap enough that I can spend time on this kind of stuff and not pay someone. I actually like doing these type of things.I guess I traded 100s LOC for my personal projects and extra LOCs for my employer in order to do the above tasks.

HP Printer 7410 will not Boot, remove wireless to fix.

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:56:50 +0000

My HP 7410 printer would not boot up last week. I have had many issues with this printer.

it sometimes dumps hex to the LCD panel,
had to have it replaced after six months when I first bought it,
It sometimes says that a cartridge is defective when it is 3/4 full and I have to replace the cartridge.
Often causes the Cable Modem VOIP line to jam if used as a fax line
Early versions of the software constantly crashed XP and caused me days of time to isolate
LCD panel does not get past “Hp Invent” on power rest, power button never lights

I think I have had it about 4 years and average about 300-400 a year on ink so this printing thing cost us about 2000.00 for the last 4 years. So I am little hesitant about spending more on it. I actually think it is cheaper to get an IPAD and use that as paper. The last issue I had was with the HP7410 not booting up. There were two external events that may have caused it.

1) I inadvertently plugged the Pinter phone lines into the phone outlet that Cablevision provides from the Cable Modem, VOIP service and sometimes this causes the CableModem to stop working. I have had to replace the CableModem twice. Should be able to do this but it doesn’t seem to work. There is no wiring issues other things work and the patch panel installed by a Professional Electrician.

2) United Illuminating replaced my meter by yanking it out with everything on

Anyway shortly after these two events I noticed I could not get the printer to work so I looked around on the Internet and found some articles on how the wireless card might be the issue. I followed the directions and I seem to be able to do everything except wireless. I have included a picture in case it helps someone else get a little more time out of this expensive thing called printing. I included a picture showing the wire I removed. These directions were very good. I am not even going to bother not putting the cover back on.

I really need to figure out how to stop printing. I had stopped for a few years and I need to do it again. It is really an inefficient way to work and exchange information. My cars are less trouble than my printer.

The Future Robot Leagues

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:40:10 +0000

I am just not into most sports with me as the player or the observer. It isn’t that I never tried them. I actually played little league baseball and was a big NY Knicks fan during the DeBusschere, Frazier, Reed, Monroe, Bradley, Barnett era. So I don’t like Robots playing sports because it makes me feel good to see a Robot win, I find it encouraging — sports may be where humans are performing at peak physical and sensory input levels — watching machines approach that using different technologies can lead to many good things. I wonder what the handicaps will be for that inevitable day when there is machine human competition, maybe an Electro Magnetic Pulse generator directed at the 1 cm diameter vulnerability area. I came across a news story about Soccer Playing Robots www.cs.cmu.edu/~robosoccer/small/ that prompted this blog entry. I was feeling encouraged about the progress and then brought down to earth by the “experts” view that it will be 2050 before a robot can play against a human in soccer. I, who really know very little about this, think they are way off. I bet the next Trillion dollar Market Cap will have roots back to participants to events such as the one in the following video.

When will I be able to buy a tennis ball pickup machine/robot for under 200.00? Of course it might be better to pick each ball up yourself and remember how it ended up there but a video with analysis would be more to my liking. Cheap personal “form” analysis seems like it would be useful, maybe it would help me exercise more, unlikely.

High Risk Infrastructure Projects as the Solution to Economic Problems

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:51:22 +0000

I watched an interview of Bernard L. Schwartz on CNN. Very few recent hits on Google or Bing about him. The basic point he was making was that we need to spend about 1 trillion dollars to get the economy to recover, something about 40k jobs for every billion. I am not going to do the math because I find so many of these while positive, providing no details on what type of jobs to fund. Take for example building and repairing of roads, ok we get new roads, they ride better and often look better and bridges designed in the 50s are fixed and not rebuilt. The real issue is why are we investing in the past instead of possibly thinking about having the center lane on all highways become a conduit for super conducting cables as part of a national grid plan. Yes it is risky but I don’t see how repairing roads will cause the change we need. I also don’t understand why we wouldn’t invest in rail as the primary way to move goods, figure out how to do it twice as fast as any truck and ten times cheaper when operating. I will refrain from Sci-Fi and not suggest that the interstate highway systems and rail networks be merged. We need to take risks and we may fail or have a tremendous success. The possibility of an economy where there aren’t enough jobs as a permanent state is not something I think we are ready for as a society. I do appreciate smooth roads, and bridges that don’t fail.

NeuroSky Bluetooth still not reliable on Mac OS

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:43:37 +0000

I am still getting frequent disconnects with the NeuroSky headset on my Mac. I was looking forward to the release supporting eye blink detection.

Maven2 environment for building naws3

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:30:06 +0000

I wish I had adopted Maven earlier. I was surprised at how well it all worked. It took a few days to go from no knowledge of Maven to a system that builds naws, generates docs and supports a Maven repository for naws3 users. These links were very helpful. Some of the things that caused me lose time were:

Tried to configure NetBeans remote repositories using pom files. That did not work you need to use the NetBeans repository browser and for some reason I could not find it. The Maven repository browser in NetBeans is not available from the project nodes, it is under Window / Other / Maven Repository Browser. More details can be found here.
The site setup for ssh took some time because of an error in The Oreilly Maven book, it used publicKey instead of privateKey for the key on page 318
naws has some files that use the IAIK security libraries, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to have the files there but not compiled by NetBeans. I was hoping that Maven would pre-process the files NetBeans includes in a project. I don’t think this is possible so I moved them out to a separate project not ideal
setting properties for Maven is still a mystery so I am just using settings.xml (-X doesn’t tell you what properties file it is reading and in what order)

The still being worked on Maven generated site can be found here: digiorgio.com/naws3 and the repository with the required jars can be found here digiorgio.com:8082/artifactory/naws3/ naws3 is hosted on kenai for source code management, ans issue tracking. CI, static analysis, dynamic analysis and OpenGrok interfaces are on digiorgio.com.

New HollyWood Series:NoJava, NoSql, NoOs, NoWindows, NoFlash, NoXML,NoPDFs

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:01:20 +0000

If I were creative I would make a movie about the nosql people trying to convince you that approximate and different answers are ok. Or maybe we should bet everything on one platform because it is just too hard to have something that runs on lots of platforms with some effort. Forget the platforms just do it all from the big server and use the browser — that’s it — the browser and AJAX is answer to all questions.