the kengell chronicles

NIST Engineers Discover Fundamental Flaw in Transistor Theory

2009-05-25T08:08:00.002-05:00

A reprint from The National Institute for Standards Tech Beat (May 20th, 2009):

There’s a newfound flaw in our understanding of transistor noise, a phenomenon affecting the electronic on-off switch that makes computer circuits possible. According to the engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who discovered the problem, it will soon stand in the way of creating more efficient, lower-powered devices like cell phones and pacemakers unless we solve it.

While exploring transistor behavior, the team found evidence that a widely accepted model explaining errors caused by electronic “noise” in the switches does not fit the facts. A transistor must be made from highly purified materials to function; defects in these materials, like rocks in a stream, can divert the flow of electricity and cause the device to malfunction. This, in turn, makes it appear to fluctuate erratically between “on” and “off” states. For decades, the engineering community has largely accepted a theoretical model that identifies these defects and helps guide designers’ efforts to mitigate them.

Those days are ending, says NIST’s Jason Campbell, who has studied the fluctuations between on-off states in progressively smaller transistors. The theory, known as the elastic tunneling model, predicts that as transistors shrink, the fluctuations should correspondingly increase in frequency.

However, Campbell’s group at NIST has shown that even in nanometer-sized transistors, the fluctuation frequency remains the same. “This implies that the theory explaining the effect must be wrong,” Campbell said. “The model was a good working theory when transistors were large, but our observations clearly indicate that it’s incorrect at the smaller nanoscale regimes where industry is headed.”

The findings have particular implications for the low-power transistors currently in demand in the latest high-tech consumer technology, such as laptop computers. Low-power transistors are coveted because using them on chips would allow devices to run longer on less power—think cell phones that can run for a week on a single charge or pacemakers that operate for a decade without changing the battery. But Campbell says that the fluctuations his group observed grow even more pronounced as the power decreased. “This is a real bottleneck in our development of transistors for low-power applications,” he says. “We have to understand the problem before we can fix it—and troublingly, we don’t know what’s actually happening.”

Campbell, who credits NIST colleague K.P. Cheung for first noticing the possibility of trouble with the theory, presented* some of the group’s findings at an industry conference on May 19, 2009, in Austin, Texas. Researchers from the University of Maryland College Park and Rutgers University also contributed to the study.

* J.P. Campbell, L.C. Yu, K.P. Cheung, J. Qin, J.S. Suehle, A. Oates, K. Sheng. Large Random Telegraph Noise in Sub-Threshold Operation of Nano-scale nMOSFETs. 2009 IEEE International Conference on Integrated Circuit Design and Technology. Austin, Texas. May 19, 2009; and Random Telegraph Noise in Highly Scaled nMOSFETs. 2009 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium, Montreal, Canada, April 29, 2009.

Microsoft Windows is not an Operating System

2009-05-01T20:28:00.003-05:00

After recently contracting for an investment firm who insists on using Microsoft Windows for an 'operating system', and after having my/their developer box re-imaged several times because of the Win32.Polipos virus rampantly running across their network, it occurred to me that Micro$oft Windoze is NOT an operating system... it's a binary petri dish whose sole purpose is to create a multi-billion dollar business for the likes of Symantec and McAffe.

As for me... I'm thankful my personal computers and laptops are running FreeBSD. Long live the BSD Foundation!

Free Network Attached Storage - FreeNAS

2008-12-05T08:03:00.025-06:00

I recently installed FreeNAS 0.69RC2 (Kralizec) on an HP Pavillion 7915. The install was the easiest server product I ever installed and worked flawlessly right out of the box. Here is what I did to add extra network attached storage for zero dollars.

Server specifications for the HP Pavillion 7915 are:

1.1GHz Celeron processor
Intel 810 chipset
128 Mb SDRAM
40 GB HD

I burned the 0.69RC2 (Kralizec) ISO onto a CD and started the Pavillion. The boot and install is very similar to a FreeBSD install (no surprise since FreeNAS is built on FreeBSD) so for those familiar with the FreeBSD installer this is a simple task. Follow the prompts to install the minimal OS and network services. Rebooting yields a server that boots in less than 16Mb of RAM. Detailed installation instructions are here.

Why FreeNAS?

Well, as the name implies it is free. Since the HP was donated to me by a coworker the server was free also (a real bonus). Secondly the ability to repurpose old hardware and create a new use for it is always a plus. Lastly the reasons to install FreeNAS include its ease of use and rock solid reliability and many more listed below.

What ships with FreeNAS?

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

Will FreeNAS work with Windows based clients?

Absolutely! FreeNAS ships with Samba server so Windows clients have no problem connecting, storing and retrieving data. See the snapshot below.

Other Solutions:

To be fair, there are other NAS solutions, for a price, but why pay when that old family computer is begging for a second life. There are other open source based NAS solutions (NASLite, Openfiler, and a host of others), but for the ease of install, web-based interface and works out of the box simplicity of FreeNAS, you owe it to yourself to download and install the very stable and full functioning NAS from FreeNAS.org (FreeNAS blog).

Acer Aspire One - painless tsclient/rdesktop install

2008-11-28T19:01:00.019-06:00

I recently installed Terminal Server Client (tsclient) and Remote Desktop (rdesktop) on my Acer Aspire One. Here's a little background on what I did to get remote access to the Microsoft Windows servers in my data-center from my Acer Aspire One netbook.

The complete installation information is at this Google Site.

Background:

tsclient - Terminal Services Client is a front end for rdesktop and other remote desktop tools.

rdesktop - remote desktop is an open source client for Microsoft's proprietary Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

The Install in Brief:

Install rdesktop using yum
Download tsclient-0.150-5.fc8.i386.rpm from rpmfind.net
Install tsclient using rpm

Once installed the AA1 desktop is modified to display the Terminal Services Client icon for ease of use.

Morris Worm - two decades later - little has changed

2008-11-09T10:18:00.006-06:00

It was November 1988 and I was an undergrad at Colorado State University when the Morris Worm started hitting computers on campus. I remember the excitement in the Physics lounge as we started to discuss and reverse engineer the virus.

The worm infected BSD based operating systems by exploiting buffer overruns using the gets function call in the utilities fingerd and sendmail. The worm collected host, network and user information and then, in turn, used this information to infect other servers using TCP or SMTP and the buffer overrun defects in sendmail and/or fingerd.

The detection of the virus started with strange files showing up in /usr/tmp directories, strange entries in /var/log/ files, but most notably was the vast number of processes running when one issued a top command.

Shortly after discovery, UC Berkley had created a patch for sendmail and made suggestions to limit the spread of the Morris Worm. Oddly enough the Morris Worm exploited a debug option (e.g. -d) in sendmail, used by many system admins (and users) to test mail configurations.

So here we are twenty years later and I am still disappointed to find my colleagues using unbounded string copy functions like gets, strcpy, strcat, etc. I recently worked with a networking group to close a security exploit in one of their communications libraries that, you guessed it did a blind copy of a buffer passed in from the user (doh!) and caused the daemons using the library to crash and dump the stack.

Therefore I have written on the whiteboard by my desk:

Use of the function strcpy is a clear indication to anyone reading your code that you are willing to walk forever to find nothing (e.g. a NULL).

As a footnote: Whatever happened to that Morris guy who created the Morris Worm? Well, Robert T. Morris was represented by the law firm Bonnor and O'Connell; tried and convicted of violating the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse act and eventually sentenced to three years probation and fined 10,000 USD. Shed no tears, R. T. Morris is an associate professor at MIT (the exact same university where he created the worm).

Acer Aspire One boot time less than 30 seconds

2008-10-27T23:51:00.003-05:00

Another reason to buy an Acer Aspire One is the quick boot time. In a recent New York Times Technical article: In a New Age of Impatience, Cutting Computer Start Time It is the black hole of the digital age — the three minutes it can take for your computer to boot up, when there is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait some more before you can log on and begin multitasking at hyper-speed.

PC manufacturers Dell, Lenova and HP will introduce a new generation of quick start computers.

Why wait for the next generation? The Acer Aspire One boots in under 30 seconds, if running the Linpus OS and booting off the 8GB solid state hard drive.

Even Microsoft, whose bloated Windows software is often blamed for sluggish start times, has pledged to do its part in the next version of the operating system, saying on a company blog that “a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.” Today only 35 percent of machines running the latest version of Windows, called Vista, boot in 30 seconds or less, the blog notes. (Apple Macintoshes tend to boot more quickly than comparable Windows machines but still feel glacially slow to most users.)

The NY Times article continues with a quote from UCLA professor Gary Small,

Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Our brains have become impatient with the boot-up process,” Dr. Small said. “We have been spoiled by the hand-held devices.”

USB Mouse on Acer Aspire One

2008-10-27T22:32:00.000-05:00

I recently tested the functionality of a USB mouse attached to my Acer Aspire One (AA1). I attached a Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue USB and PS/2 Compatible mouse and started the AA1 without issue. Both the left and right mouse buttons worked as did the scroll wheel and center mouse mouse button (scroll wheel).

The output from from dmesg is:

ALC INIT<6>usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev
input: Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input8
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2

Unplugging the mouse and reattaching while the AA1 is running again was no problem and produces a dmesg output of:

usb 2-2: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 2-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input9
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2

Breaking the century mark

2008-10-22T22:28:00.005-05:00

No, this post is not to celebrate my turning 100, though at times I do feel a hundred years old. No, this post is to celebrate the 1o1st country to join the viewing ranks of the kengell chronicles.

Ranked by number of page views, the top ten countries to visit the kengell chronicles are:

United States
Canada
United Kingdom
Norway
Spain
Austria
Germany
Netherlands
Denmark
Finland

The 101st country to join the kengell chronicle ranks is Malawi. Thanks to all who have read the chronicles.

Ranked by page views the continents are:

North America
South America
Europe
Asia
Oceania
Africa

I just need one person in Antarctica to read this blog and the continent list will be complete.

Transfer files between a Blackberry Curve 8310 and an Acer Aspire One

2008-10-19T13:38:00.011-05:00

It is easy to transfer files (e.g. photos) between a Blackberry Curve 8310 and an Acer Aspire One (AA1).

First a few background details: The AA1 comes with 5 usb ports (according to the dmesg output).

$ dmesg | grep 'new USB'
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5

When plugging the Blackberry into one of those USB ports, two events happen; one on the AA1 and the other on the Blackberry.

$ dmesg
...
scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access RIM BlackBerry SD 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 CCS
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3994624 512-byte hardware sectors (2045 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 53
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3994624 512-byte hardware sectors (2045 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 53
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

The Blackberry warns:

USB charging current is not sufficient. Verify that your handheld is connecting to a powered USB charging source and that the proper USB driver is installed.

acknowledging that message, one is presented with:

Do you want to turn on Mass Storage Mode? You might not be able to access some media files in this mode.

Then one is presented with the option:

Mass Storage Mode is being activated. Enter your device password to grant access:

Finally after acknowledging the warnings and supplying the Blackberry password access to the USB storage on the Blackberry is available. It then can be treated like all other storage devices.

Surfing the Green Wave in Copenhagen

2008-10-17T21:51:00.010-05:00

In Chicago we have what's known as the "Chicago Pace" (not to be confused with the PACE buses). Simply put, if you walk at the right pace you can cruise from intersection to intersection without stopping (not that jaywalking is unknown among Chicagoans). I've been able to walk from my office on the corner of Wacker and Adams to the Art Institute (Michigan Ave and Adams) in under ten minutes; a distance of about 1 km. The same applies when walking up Wacker Drive from the Sears Tower to the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue.

In Copenhagen they use the term "Green Wave". If you cycle (Danes cycle everywhere) into Copenhagen on certain high traffic streets (Nørrebrogade being one of them) and maintain a ~20 km/hr pace you will be into city center in no time at all. Colville Andersen has produced a neat little video capturing the 'green wave' in action. Have a look at and treat yourself to a little Danish 'bicycle' rock; Iben's Jeg savner min blå cykel - (I miss my blue blue bicycle) and Tue West's Sæt dig bag på min cykel - (Sit up on the back of my bike).

The Green Wave in Copenhagen from Colville Andersen on Vimeo.

Notice, in the video, the street lights changing to green in the upper right hand corner. Also take note how the Danes have separated the main street (lowest level), the bike path (cyclevej) on the next level up from the foot path (highest level).

PC-BSD on a USB memory stick

2008-10-13T16:11:00.009-05:00

My goal was simple: create a bootable USB memory stick and copy the install image of PC-BSD onto the USB memory stick.

This was achieved w/o much trouble using my FreeBSD server at work. I performed the following operations logged in as root.

The USB image was downloaded from the PC-BSD website

Assumption: the USB memory stick is plugged into the server at /dev/da0

# fdisk -BI /dev/da0
# bsdlabel -w -B /dev/da0s1
# newfs /dev/da0
# dd if=/usr/home/kengell/PCBSD7-x86-USB.img of=/dev/da0 bs=1m

Acer Aspire One: painless skype install

2008-09-13T15:38:00.017-05:00

I installed Skype on my Acer Aspire One. The Aspire One is a perfect skype platform (having a built in web camera). Here's how I installed Skype for fedora 7 linux:

UPDATE: 2009-01-02 - Please read the notes on my Google site to track the comments and changes since this original post. The instructions below are now out of date when Acer released a Skype installer.

Download the skype rpm (fedora 7)

Go here to download the fedora 7 version of skype. I downloaded and installed skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586.rpm

Run the Installer:

Once downloaded double click the skype rpm to run the installer. Note: you will be prompted to supply an 'authentication code' which is the 'root' password to run the Linpus package installer. The root password was assigned (hopefully by you) when the AA1 was first turned on.

Install additional rpms

Additional rpms are required by skype so those have to be downloaded and installed as well.

Chose Install anyway when presented with a warning from the installer.

Configure the desktop to display the Skype icon

Edit the file /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml using the mousepad (default) editor. Type the following in the xterm window.

$ mousepad /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

And add the line:

/usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

to the appropriate section as per the image below.

Once added and the Acer Aspire One is rebooted the Skype icon is available:

Updates

I started a notes page on Google sites to track the comments and changes since this original post.

Acer Aspire One: increased security using GDM

2008-09-11T20:26:00.015-05:00

I use my minty fresh Acer Aspire One for work. I work in the financial markets, ergo, it has to be rock solid secure. So to increase the security of my netboook I disabled the auto-magic login functionality and run the Gnome Display Manager (GDM) on startup to force a login. There are other benefits to doing this as well (like being able to switch window managers from Xfce to blackbox (which I'll explain in another post).

How to disable auto-logon:

WARNING: take extreme caution doing this or you will have a non-functioning netbook when rebooted. Be sure to read all instructions completely before making any changes and double check your work . You will need to remember the password you used when first turning on the Aspire One- good luck!

Edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.S

Find and comment out the line

/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &

thusly

#/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &

and right below this line add the invocation to the Gnome Display Manager (gdm):

/usr/sbin/gdm

as shown in the screen shot below:

If all is done correctly, when rebooted the GDM will present you with a welcome menu for user. I do hope you remember the password you used when you first turned on your Acer Aspire One.

Acer Aspire One: enable the xfce4 'right click menu'

2008-09-10T19:57:00.000-05:00

To enable the right click menu so common and loved by we users of Xfce (the window manager that ships with the Acer Aspire One) perform the following:

Select the 'My Files' icon in the Files menu box:

Select 'File'

In the pull down menu select Terminal and in the terminal window type xfce-setting-show to bring up the settings window

Select Desktop in the Xfce Setting Manager

Select the Behavior tab and check the box labeled Show desktop menu on right click

And there you have it! No need to reboot, just enjoy the Xfce menu when right clicking on the desk top.

Blogger Tips and Tricks - enlarging the text area

2008-09-09T22:05:00.009-05:00

Disappointed with the standard blog templates? Text area too small? Well with just a few changes to your blog template you can make your blog much more laptop friendly (wider) by hand tweaking any template. Here's how:

Select 'Layout' -> 'Edit HTML'

Then modify the following lines in your template.

#header-wrapper {
width:1024px; margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;
}

#outer-wrapper {
width: 1024px; margin:0 auto;
padding:10px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}

#main-wrapper {
width: 800px; float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 200px;
float: $endSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

400 years of QA - not much has changed

2008-09-03T21:15:00.006-05:00

In a recent ACM Communications article George V. Neville-Neil describes the QA process involved when the Swedish Navy tested the (now infamous) Vasa battle ship:

In 1628 the ship was finally ready for quality assurance (QA) testing. Seventeenth-century QA of ships was a bit different from what might happen today. Thirty sailors were picked and asked to run back and forth, port to starboard, across the deck of the ship. If the ship didn't tip over and sink, then the ship passed the test. You did not want to be on the QA team in 1628. After only three runs across the deck the Vasa began to tilt wildly and the test was canceled. The test may have been canceled, but not the project. On August 10, 1628, in a light breeze, the Vasa set sail. She was less than a mile from dock when a stiff breeze knocked her sideways. She took on water, and sank ... killing 30 to 50 sailors. In response to the catastrophe, the King wrote a letter insisting that incompetence had been the reason for the disaster (even though the King was the project manager and chief architect). Of course, the King could not be held at fault, so the final verdict was an "act of God."

Some personal footnotes:

QA still using antiquated methods for testing
Projects continue along blindly believing nothing is wrong even after QA flags serious errors
'acts of God' still being invoked by managers to explain defects

Google Chrome Rocks!

2008-09-02T20:20:00.012-05:00

Today, Google released their new Chrome web browser! Immediately I downloaded it and am now creating this entry using it. First impressions are:

Cleaner interface when compared to Firefox and certainly IE: which could also be taken to mean fewer bells and whistles.

Consumes less vertical real estate: no status bar and no toolbars which is a big plus when using a smaller netbook with a 12 inch monitor.

Only available for Windows XP/Vista OS: certainly since Chrome is the child of Apple's Webkit and Mozilla's Firefox the Linux and Mac OS versions will be release soon.

Auto-magically imports Firefox bookmarks and passwords and allows for viewing and editing of passwords.

Dynamic tabbing allows one to pull the tab into its own window and back onto the tab bar.

A right-click in the Tabs Section allows one to start a mini-Windows Task manager. A great feature to see, on a tab by tab basis, how certain tabs are behaving or misbehaving; allows for termination of a tab if so desired.

Incognito mode: The pages viewed in the incognito window won't appear in browser or search and no cookies!

When maximized it prevents with the Windows toolbar from auto-hiding/showing. Oh well - something to fix in version 2.

Rockwell Turbo Incabulator Transmission

2008-08-25T19:48:00.003-05:00

I think General Motors installed this in my 1999 Chevy Silverado Z71. It would explain the amber 'Check 4x4" light on my display panel.

Painless Acer Aspire One upgrade for wpa2-enterprise

2008-08-25T18:51:00.027-05:00

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook running the Linpus (fedora) OS. Long story short I love it! At 1Kg it's the envy of my fellow geeks!

However I could not use it to connect to our corporate wireless network because the Linpus OS and Network Manager installed does not support WPA2-Enterprise. So starting with this conversation on the Acer Aspire One Forum here's what I did to upgrade the Network Manager:

NOTE: It would appear that the prior instructions, as of 2008-10-09, are no longer valid. Therefore a shell script and archive that contains all that I needed to update the default Network Manager to one that supports WPA2-Enterprise are stored on my google site page.

Reboot the Acer Asprie One after installing the new Network Manger and enjoy WPA2-Enterprise.

For more information about this and all things Aspire One checkout the very informative Acer Aspire One Forum.

Acer Aspire One - Intel Atom N270 - system information

2008-08-12T19:28:00.008-05:00

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook. The system information is shown below.

The operating system is:

Linux version 2.6.23.9lw (gcc version 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)) #105 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jun 27 18:56:59 EDT 2008

Here are some of the statistics according to dmesg. It leads me to believe that there are two Intel Atom N270 CPUs inside the netbook.

However according to Intel:

Hyper-Threading Technology3 (two threads) provides high performance-per-watt efficiency in an in-order pipeline and increased system responsiveness in multi-tasking environments. One execution core is seen as two logical processors, and parallel threads are executed on a single core with shared resources.

The full dmesg out put is here.

The Phoenix has landed!

2008-05-26T07:38:00.007-05:00

After spending the better part of a year traveling toward Mars, the Phoenix has landed on the surface. First images arrived shortly after touchdown. Some interesting numbers to ponder:

422,000,000 (miles traveled to reach Martian surface)
12,500 (initial entry speed in miles per hour)
3200 (distance in feet from Martian surface when the parachute separates)
2600 (heat shield temperature in degrees Fahrenheit)
900 (entry speed in mph after Martian atmosphere slows the craft)
250 (entry speed in mph after the parachute deploys)
125 (speed of Phoenix, in mph, when the parachute separates)
15.3 (number of minutes for signal from Mars to reach the Earth - on 25 May 2008)
7 (number of minutes for entire Entry Descent Landing - EDL)
0.5 (thickness of heat shield in inches of 'cork')

Urinal Games...

2008-05-25T14:01:00.005-05:00

I know parents, who in their attempt to 'potty train' young boys, pour Cheerios into the toilet and tell the young lad "now try and sink them".

A more expensive version of this game has been produced by Yanko Designs (designed by Marcel Neundorfer) called the 'On Target' in which the 'participants' control the video game with... well... a stream of urine.

According to Yanko Designs the reason for doing this is the same as my friends when they use Cheerios at home with their young boys:

Recessed into a urinal is a pressure-sensitive display screen. When the guest uses it, he triggers an interactive game, producing images and sound. The reduced size of the target improves restroom hygiene and saves on cleanings costs - Yanko Designs

Note: Too bad Nintendo didn't invent this... they could have called the "Nintendo Wee".

BlackBerry Shortcuts (for the true geek)

2008-05-06T10:09:00.001-05:00

Like most business professionals I'm addicted to my BlackBerry 8310 Curve. However, I'm also a geek so to enhance the geek experience I list some keyboard shortcuts...

Alt+Escape to switch from one application to another (like the Alt-Tab in Win32 or Unix)
View Event Log (didn't even know there was one!)

From the Home Screen - hold down the Alt key and type (with your free hand) LGLG.

Each item in the log is selectable by clicking to display the details.
You can change the default logging level from warning->info->debug by pressing the 'menu' key and select 'options'

Reboot blackberry w/o removing battery: Alt-RightShift-Delete.

NOTE: The Right Shift key is in the bottom right (key: aA^). This is a quick reboot.

Change signal strength display from bars to numeric in units of dBm (decibels per milliwatt).

Hold the Alt key and type 'NMLL'. To revert hold down Alt and type "NMLL" again. readings from -45 to -85 are very strong signals. The lower (more negative the number) the weaker the signal.

Help Me Screen - navigate to home screen then press and hold Alt-Shift-H. This is hard to execute as all three keys have to be pressed; easier if you press and hold the Alt and Shift with your left thumb. Hit the escape key to exit. Below is a list of items viewable in the Help Me screen

Vendor ID
App Version
PIN
IMEI - Internet Mobile Equipment Identifier
Uptime - in seconds (does not automagically convert to hours/days/weeks, etc)
Signal Strength - in dBm
Battery Level - percent capacity
File Free - in bytes
File Total - in bytes

Generation Y - You've got to be kidding me!

2008-04-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

A recent management-issues article claims "Generation Y still wants it all". Here's quick list of Gen-Y demands that many managers will have to deal with even in these difficult times:

less than a 40 hour work week
flexible work hours
concerned they would not be able to keep up with interests outside of work
concerned they would be overworked by their employers
33% want to 'travel' on the job but less than 10% want to relocate

Hey Gen-Y! Get a clue! It's called work for a reason - you're expected to work your A$$ off. If you're concerned about your social life try being 'social' w/o a dollar in your pocket! It doesn't work so well does it? Concerned you'll be 'overworked'? Get used to it!

Here's my suggestions to Gen-Y:

Be thankful you have a job
Work your a$$ off
Keep your mouth shut
Keep your eyes open
Help those in the cubicles around you
Show up early
Leave late

We IT veterans are tired of picking up the pieces left behind by you Gen-Y flunkies! Get a clue! You're young, inexperienced and now you want your boss to cut you some slack because your social life is interfering w/ your work assignments? Not on my watch!

NetBSD Toaster

2008-03-01T20:47:00.002-06:00

So it may not be the most practical use of NetBSD or a TS-7200 SBC, but you can't fault the imagination of the engineers at Technologic Systems. Did I mention, it comes w/ an RJ45 connector an Apache Web server and it plays MP3s while making toast!

Sure beats the Micro$oft Flying Toasters!

More here.

Who cares about Fermilab? (Part II)

2008-02-02T20:45:00.000-06:00

In an earlier post I pointed out that the entire computer industry owes its success to high energy physics (HEP); that medical imaging would not be where it is today without physics research done a few generations ago. In this second installment of "Who cares about Fermilab?" I raise awareness of research in retinal implants and track their development back to, you guessed it high energy physics.

In a 2007 article, written by Emily Singer, that appeared in the MIT Technology Review, she interviews Alan Litke, a physicist at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) who's applying his particle detector expertise to neurobiology in what is titled the Retinal Readout Project.

Litke and his collaborators modeled their [artificial retinal] chip after the silicon microchip detectors that line supercolliders to capture signs of elusive, high-energy, subatomic particles, such as the Higgs boson.

So once again I ask "Who cares about Fermilab?" The answer might just be we all do, or should, because we just never know what good may come from deep under the ground where particles collide at near light speed.

Painless FreeBSD upgrade (6.2 to 6.3)

2008-01-21T20:45:00.000-06:00

Just follow the steps below to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.3 (taken from the FreeBSD 6.3 release notes). Earlier in this blog I wrote about upgrading my Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop and my wiki server from FreeBSD 6.1 to 6.2. This was a painless process thanks to the fine folks at FreeBSD. Well, now that 6.3 is out, the upgrade to 6.3 was even easier.

FreeBSD Update

Starting with FreeBSD 6.3, the freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems systems running earlier FreeBSD releases, release candidates, and betas. Users upgrading to FreeBSD 6.3 from older releases (in particular, older than 6.3-RC1) will need to download an updated version of freebsd-update(8) that supports upgrading to a new release.

# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

Downloading and verifying the digital signature for the tarball (signed by the FreeBSD Security Officer's PGP key) is highly recommended.

# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc

# gpg --verify freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

The new freebsd-update(8) can then be extracted and run as follows:

# tar -xf freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -r 6.3-RELEASE upgrade

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

Finally, freebsd-update.sh needs to be run one more time to install the new userland components, and the system needs to be rebooted one last time:

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

# shutdown -r now

For more information, see:

http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-11-10-freebsd-minor-version-upgrade.html

Overheard

2008-01-20T20:20:00.000-06:00

"If it weren't for the fact that I was AWOL from the Army I would have told the warden my name."

I ride the Metra to Chicago for work each day and I don't generally eavesdrop on conversations, but I admit, I had to stop reading my book and listen in on this conversation. How could you not eavesdrop? This has to be the best opening sentence to a personal story I've ever heard!

Who cares about Fermilab?

2008-01-20T08:03:00.000-06:00

Who cares about Fermilab? Well, more accurately, "Why should I care?" I'm asked this quite frequently by my Wall Street colleagues, knowing that I had worked at Fermilab (for most of the 1990s). "Why should I care if some scientist loses his job?", they ask. "Can't they just go back and teach at a university?" or "What does it mean to me if the Higgs boson is discovered?" These questions may best be answered by going back about three generations.

In the late 1890s the British scientist Joseph John "J J" Thomson conducted a series of tests on the then mysterious cathode rays (e.g. electrons). His apparatus consisted of two charged plates inside an evacuated glass tube, a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). A generation after JJ Thomson, in the 1920s, the concepts of the CRT were applied to produce oscilloscopes. Twenty years later the Allied forces in World War II used CRTs, along w/ radar, to detect enemy airplanes. The television, medical imaging and computer industries, just a single generation later, would never have flourished without the ground breaking work of JJ Thomson. You would not be reading this article now without the efforts of the early pioneers in high energy physics (HEP).

Who cares about Fermilab? Perhaps the question should be "Why don't we care more?" Will the discovery of the Higgs boson have a direct and life changing effect on us now? Many doubt it will, but then again could anyone, in JJ Thomson's time, have predicted the life changing technologies that emerged just a few generations later?

Market Data Center Efficiency

2008-01-03T13:46:00.004-06:00

Having spent the last few years calculating, monitoring and measuring data center efficiency, my coworkers and I created our own unit of data center efficiency; the kengell.

kengell -- A data-center efficiency metric.

Main Entry
- kengell
Pronunciation:
- 'king-gull'
Function:
- technology term
Keith Engell 1962- ; American computer scientist
- a data-center measurement equal to one message processed per one unit of power
  - NOTE: one Joule = one watt-second or rather 1W = 1J/s

Example:

An application on a server processes 500,000 messages in one second. The server consumes 160 watts (160 Joules/sec). The application has a data-center rating of 3,125 kengells or 3.125 kilokengell (kK)

500,000 messags/sec / 160 J/sec = 3125 messages/Joule = 3125 kengells (or 3.125 kilokengell)

Quantities of kengell
SI prefixes (decimal)		IEC prefixes (binary)

1000^−8 = 10^−24	yoctokengell (yk)
1000^−7 = 10^−21	zeptokengell (zk)
1000^−6 = 10^−18	attokengell (ak)
1000^−5 = 10^−15	femtokengell (fk)
1000^−4 = 10^−12	picokengell (pk)
1000^−3 = 10^−9	nanokengell (nk)
1000^−2 = 10^−6	microkengell (µk)
1000^−1 = 10^−3	millikengell (mk)
1000^−2/3 = 10^−2	centikengell (ck)
1000^-1/3 = 10^-1	decikengell (dk)
1000^0 = 10^0	kengell (k)
1000^1 = 10^3	kilokengell (kK)	1024^1 = 2^10 = 1.024·10^3	kibikengell (KiK)
1000^2 = 10^6	megakengell (MK)	1024^2 = 2^20 ≈ 1.049·10^6	mebikengell (MiK)
1000^3 = 10^9	gigakengell (GK)	1024^3 = 2^30 ≈ 1.074·10^9	gibikengell (GiK)
1000^4 = 10^12	terakengell (TK)	1024^4 = 2^40 ≈ 1.100·10^12	tebikengell (TiK)
1000^5 = 10^15	petakengell (PK)	1024^5 = 2^50 ≈ 1.126·10^15	pebikengell (PiK)
1000^6 = 10^18	exakengell (EK)	1024^6 = 2^60 ≈ 1.153·10^18	exbikengell (EiK)
1000^7 = 10^21	zettakengell (ZK)	1024^7 = 2^70 ≈ 1.181·10^21	zebikengell (ZiK)
1000^8 = 10^24	yottakengell (YK)	1024^8 = 2^80 ≈ 1.209·10^24	yobikengell (YiK)

Gmail 2.0 performance issues

2007-12-02T11:47:00.000-06:00

The new Gmail 2.0 interface kills the performance of my Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop running FreeBSD 6.2 with the Fluxbox-0.1.14 x11 window manager and the Firefox 1.5 web browser.

Using /usr/bin/top shows the difference. Once Gmail 2.0 loads up and the initial load spike settles down 'top' shows CPU activity between 10-30%. Switching back to Gmail's Older Version drops the CPU down under 2%. Also, I configured /usr/local/bin/pine to use the Gmail IMAP interface (gmail -> Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP), in the meantime, so I can read my email w/o Firefox.

I hadn't noticed the performance issue at work where I run FreeBSD on a dual AMD64 platform. However on my ~10 year old Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop Gmail 2.0 sucks the life out of the PII CPU.

$ uname -a
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 #0 Thu Nov 29 04:07:33 UTC 2007 root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/src/sys/GENERIC i386

$ dmesg | egrep "CPU|MB"
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (397.05-MHz 686-class CPU)
real memory = 134152192

Also, it appears the new Gmail interface is buggy. In fact, while typing this entry the browser (Firefox 1.5) crashed and left a nice core file for me in my /home directory. Apparently, according to PC World, I'm not alone in my complaints.

Painless FreeBSD upgrade (6.1 to 6.2)

2007-08-18T16:56:00.000-05:00

I've dreaded upgrading my personal web server from FreeBSD 6.1 to 6.2 because I'm new to FreeBSD and totally screwed up my unbuntu dev box the other day upgrading from 6.10 to 7.04. However I must give Colin Percival a giant THANKS for making this FreeBSD upgrade a very painless exercise. Trust me folks, if I can do this anyone can! Yet another reason to dump your Linux distro and run FreeBSD.

Check out Colin's notes on upgrading FreeBSD from one version to another.

Isaac Newton: Ocean of Truth

2007-05-01T20:16:00.000-05:00

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton, From Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
English mathematician & physicist (1642 - 1727)

I have always enjoyed spouting this quote to family and friends, but have been haunted by the exact meaning. Is Newton lamenting that his studies in astronomy, light and mathematics kept him from studying (fully) alchemy? Or, rather that he did not see his accomplishments in the same light as we?

Lost in translation

2007-04-15T19:53:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the right words elude me. Sometimes what I want to say just doesn't come out of my mouth. I have these problems in my native tongue. Imagine the problem of trying to precisely express yourself in a 'foreign' tongue.

The Associated Press reported a story of a German passenger who used the wrong idiom to express his desire to use the toilet but ended up in jail for nine months.

How could this happen?

Apparently the idiom he used was "the roof would go" or "then the roof goes". To a flight attendant, a passenger using words that indicate the roof of the plane is about to come off is not a laughing matter and one, apparently, that will force the plane to make an emergency landing.

I did find a link to the AP article (name changed to protect the innocent... we'll just refer to him as 'G'):

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
An intoxicated German passenger jailed for making a bomb threat really meant that his bladder - not the plane - was about to explode, a federal judge ruled. G, 23, who speaks little English, was freed Wednesday after spending nine months in prison on federal charges of interfering with a flight crew and making a false bomb threat.

Source: United States v. G, 841 F. Supp 1169 (S.D. Fla. 1993)
G was a passenger on a charter flight from Fort Lauderdale to Hanover, Germany. Shortly after take-off, he went to the middle of the plane, and, in the court's words "acted as if he thought he was in the toilet." Id. at 1170. When stopped by flight attendants, G announced "the roof was going to go." Id. He then made a broad sweeping gesture which the attendants thought indicated an explosion would occur. He became unruly, and the plane returned to Fort Lauderdale because of fear that he had brought a bomb aboard. Later, at his guilty plea hearing, G claimed his gesture was "to show that his bladder was going to explode and not the roof of the aircraft" and elaborated, "well, if my bladder explodes, then also the roof would go." Id. at 1171.

FreeBSD: APM not working on Dell Inspiron 3500

2007-04-08T15:19:00.000-05:00

I've been running FreeBSD (recently upgraded to 6.2) on my Dell Inspiron 3500 w/ the Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 for some time now, but could never get APM (Advanced Power Management) to work. When I had a spare hour or two I'd research this topic to no avail. Today the pieces came together.

Problem: I wanted to see my battery level but couldn't.

Each time I would try to run apm to see my battery status I would get:

APM; /dev/apm: No such file or directory

Resolution:

Modified /boot/loader.conf to include the lines:

apm_load="YES"
hw.acpi.verbose=1
hint.acpi.0.disabled=0

and rebooted the laptop.

Now when I type apm I see:

APM version: 1.2
APM Management: Enabled
AC Line status: off-line
Battery Status: high
Remaining battery life: 99%
Remaining battery time: unknown
Number of batteries: 2
Battery 0:
Battery Status: high
Remaining battery life: 100%
Remaining battery time: unknown
Battery 1:
Battery Status: high
Remaining battery life: 98%
Remaining battery time: unknown

American Nightmare

2007-04-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

Rising rate of foreclosures bring tragic end to dream of home ownership.
-Beacon News Sunday April 8, 2006

That's what the local press would have us believe. The press would have us believe that the foreclosure rate is on the rise. Wrong! That's what one might believe if all one did was read the front page of the Beacon News (a Chicago Sun-Times News Group paper).

Year over year we see that foreclosures have increased from 779 in 2003 to 1,223 in 2006; a 57% increase. That's what the front page would lead us believe. However, if we turn the page and dig deeper into the article we read,

About one out of every 100 homes... facing foreclosure, the same percentage as nationwide.

One percent! Hardly an epidemic and not on the rise! What the article failed to report is that this region, outside Chicago, is one of the fastest growing housing markets in the country! So with all the new houses being built, we would expect that the number of foreclosures, not percentage, would increase.

Guess the newspaper more interested in selling subscriptions, not information...

Physicists, Mathematicians the best programmers?

2007-04-02T18:38:00.001-05:00

Why is it that some software engineers and computer scientists are able to produce clear, elegant designs and programs, while others cannot? Is it possible to improve these skills through education and training? Critical to these questions is the notion of abstraction.

These are the questions Dr. Jeff Kramer of Imperial College London asks in his latest paper titled Is abstraction the key to computing? -- ACM Volume 50 Issue 4.

So perhaps I advanced Dr. Kramer's argument a bit too far to fit my educational background (Physics degree, Secondary Science Education Certification). However, here's why I believe Physicists in general are better software developers than their Computer Science (only) counterparts.

Abstraction Skills: Having to install, configure, manipulate laboratory equipment to produce results that prove or disprove an esoteric equation on the chalkboard is a great exercise in abstraction. Raise your hand if you have ever suspended an oil droplet in an electrostatic chamber (Millikan Oil Drop Experiment) and produced a value within one percent of the currently accepted value for the charge on an electron? I dare say that infinitely many Physics undergraduates have! Along the way burning themselves with hot oil and shocking themselves with high voltage DC power supplies!

The skills necessary to convert abstract, complex (Quantum Mechanics anyone?) ideas into easily digestible and meaningful equations and then convey those ideas to others is another form of abstraction. To distill down the complex into the essential leaving all extraneous bits out.

"Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler"

- Einstein

Debugging Skills: Physicists have better problem solving skills than do their CS counterparts. They have to! It's just that simple. They have to because to earn a degree in Physics one has to solve countless Physics and Math problems (on paper and in the lab). This requires very good problem solving skills and the ability to view the 'big picture' while working on the minutia and to quickly jump back and forth. This makes for better debugging and problem solving.

Abstract Communication Skills: Physic teachers are able to carefully select the appropriate level of abstraction to include only that which is necessary or required to properly convey the idea for the target audience. The same lesson (F=ma) has to be conveyed differently to sophomores than to seniors. Good Physics teachers are able to do just that. This skill is valuable especially when in the boardroom trying to convey to the "Decision Makers" why one software implementation plan is better than another.

Is Abstraction Teachable? If so, then how? Good questions. Dr Kramer addresses the teaching of abstraction in his paper. Join the ACM and read it online.

April Fools

2007-04-01T09:05:00.001-05:00

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894

Happy Birthday Gmail

2007-03-28T18:59:00.000-05:00

Gmail turns 3 this year. When announced on April 1st, 2004 people thought it was an "April Fools" joke. However at the time the one Gigabyte for email storage it offered was four times that of Microsoft's Hotmail.

Yahoo now is offering unlimited storage (up from 1Gb) and it would appear that Microsoft has upped the Hotmail storage to 2Gb.

What sets Gmail/Google apart is their ease of integration and the ever increasing products (Gmail, blog, desktop search, notebook, analytics, etc) in the Google software family.

Visual Studio turns 10 years old

2007-03-27T18:41:00.001-05:00

It's hard to believe that Developer Studio turned ten years old on March 19th. While I'm not big time Developer Studio Power User I do use it each and every day to write server side software and have so since 1999. Here's why I like Developer Studio.

MSDN -- w/o a doubt the best online C++ help
Intellisense
Debugger

What I don't like.

Resource Hog

Leaving the IDE running long term (multiple days) consumes memory and becomes sluggish

Sometime Intellisense freaks out and takes minutes to rebuild its database

I still use ddd and Emacs when programming in the unix world and quite honestly I could easily go back to the world of emacs-man-ddd instead of using an integrated IDE like Developer Studio but as long as my employer insists on running the data center on Win32... so be it.

The discipline of writing software

2007-03-26T20:20:00.001-05:00

I've been using C/C++ static analysis tools for almost 20 years now. By 'static analysis' I mean lint. Lint on VAX/VMS; Lint on UNIX; Lint on Win32. By far the best static analysis tool I have ever used is PC-Lint/Flexelint by gimpel.

If you think that your compiler w/ warnings turned to the maximum value will catch your mistakes, you are wrong and are wasting your employer's revenues with your ignorance.

Compilers convert text files into machine instructions. The warnings they generate are merely secondary/tertiary artifacts of this process.

Most recently I presented a three year case study to my employer that clearly shows how the use of PC-Lint reduced software defects from 80%->60%->20% during that three year period.

Not only does lint catch your defects, but by repeatedly seeing the same errors it causes the astute programmer to rethink how he implements software.

Algorithmic-Trading blog created

2007-03-25T20:34:00.000-05:00

In order to spare professional traders and software engineers working on algorithmic-trading from my mindless brain droppings about science and software in general I have created an algorithmic-trading blog. I hope this enhances the reading experience for all involved.

Researchers develop intelligent, driverless car

2007-03-23T19:12:00.000-05:00

If you thought intelligent cars capable of negotiating a city centre with no driver behind the wheel were just the dream of Hollywood film writers you could be wrong. Researchers at the University of Essex think their work developing an autonomous model car could pave the way for intelligent driverless cars.

One question... "At whom will I point my 'driving finger' when a driverless car cuts me off at an intersection?

Full Article Here

GOD is REAL unless declared INTEGER

2007-03-22T19:36:00.001-05:00

John Backus, team leader for IBM in the 1950s, and credited for 'inventing' FORTRAN has passed away. Backus assembled a small group of IBM employees to "develop an easier way to program IBM's new 701 machine". What resulted was, in 1954, a paper titled, "Preliminary Report, Specifications for the IBM Mathematical FORmula TRANslating System, FORTRAN." Backus stayed with IBM for nearly 40 years before retiring in 1991.

Having learned FORTRAN 77 as my first 'real' language, on a CDC Cyber 205, I still have a fondness for it. I recall many a night, as an undergrad, punching cards containing what today seems like trivial lines of code, but at the time was a very complex problem. Waiting for the card reader to swallow the stack of waxed color coded cards containing FOR loops and SUBROUTINE brings back a flood of emotions and memories. Will the program compile? Will the card reader jam? When will I get my output? The undergraduate lab was in the basement of the Weber building on the campus of Colorado State University and as such there was a unique smell that came from being below ground level in an old building. A set of electrical conduits clearly visible because it was easier to run the power cables outside the walls created an industrial effect.

Side Note: Most creative use of the waxed punch cards? A civil engineering professor I worked for used the small rectangular chaff as surface analysis visual aids when filming hydrodynamics in river and flood plain studies. He'd have me duplicate a card that had every possible hole punched. I would go through boxes of minty fresh cards reducing them to Swiss cheese. We would then sprinkle the chaff on the surface and film the swirls and eddies.

Importance of Quality Control

2007-03-21T20:26:00.000-05:00

When I read the following headlines, I just have to sit back, scratch my head and ask, "What the heck is going on?" Where's the quality control?

Elementary state achievement tests contain errors, board says -- Northwest Herald, Illinois

Many of the errors – ranging from wrong directions on how to complete the exams to multiple-choice questions without a correct answer as an option – were caught before the March 13 testing window opened. School administrators were sent instructions on how to address the mistakes. For example, in seventh-grade reading booklets, students are directed to answer a question on the wrong page. A sixth-grade math question calls for answers in centimeters, but all multiple choice answers are in inches. Other mistakes are in the instructional manual and a Braille test.

Tests of Suspect Pet Food Kills 7 -- CBS

As many as seven animals died in tests of suspect dog and cat food by the manufacturer after complaints the products were poisoning pets around the country, the government said Monday.

I have to ask the obvious, if seven animals die while testing the pet food, why would you release the product?

Algorithmic-Trading for Dummies

2007-03-20T20:13:00.000-05:00

Will all the algorithmic-trading gurus; the so called boy wonders of Wall Street please get their act together?!

The problem is interface consistency. Sure, there is the FIX Protocol 'standard' that most algorithmic engines use. However, even FIX is stretched to its limit when dealing with algos.

So here's my suggestion to all of you who write algo engine interfaces... attend the FIX Protocol's Algorithmic Trading Working Group and figure this all out!

The diversity in describing an algo (FIX fields, values, etc) are costing all of us time and money. Time to read and understand these so called specifications and money to constantly keep changing our Order Management Systems (OMS) to keep up with your so called great ideas (like calling an order a 'day' order when it really is a 'good until cancel').

Is it really that hard to specify the fundamentals of trading:

price
time
volume
aggressiveness
strategy

Furthermore, quite honestly, algos are money loosing ventures except for folks like me... We have to keep changing software to interface your silly algo engines so we keep getting a paycheck! However, CFOs are none to happy when passed in the hall and thanked by the likes of me for paying me in ever increasing amounts to invest in money losing ventures like algorithmic trading.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled production outage...

Why we write Software

2007-03-19T19:46:00.000-05:00

We write software for one of two reasons: to increase revenue or to decrease costs. When you distill down the essence of software development in the dot-com world it comes down to those two choices.

Sorry if this bursts your bubble, but that's it.

Oh sure, writing software is a great vocation, I highly recommend it.

However, understand that all those years spent learning, debugging, testing and patching, still comes does not resolve the question of why we do what we do?

For the 99 percent of us (myself included) who are *not* the top one percent of the programming elite (Stroustrup, Sutter, Gosling, Lamport, etc)... we write corporate software because some 'suit' thinks this idea will generate revenue, or some pointy-haired Dilbertian boss wants to reduce software overhead (cost).

It's somewhat different in the dot-gov and dot-org world, but not much. If this sounds harsh feel free to post a rebuttal.

Our love affair with lists

2007-03-16T18:20:00.000-05:00

What is it about humans and our affinity for lists?

Most of us learn sequentially (concrete-sequentially if I use the Gregorc nomenclature to be exact) so here's why I believe we humans like lists (in the form of a list of course):

Growing up I listened to Casey Kasem's Top 40, prior to that was Dick Clark's countdown. My first recollection of a list was all the things I my parents had for me to do before I could go outside and play.

If I search in the dictionary for the word list, I'm confronted with another list of the possible definitions for list (kind of self referential don't you think?).

Here's some others lists:

Fortune 500
FBI Ten Most Wanted
ESPN Top Ten.
David Letterman has his Top Ten.
Keith Olbermann has his Countdown.
Ellen Degeneres has her Life List
1000 Places to See Before I Die

Which reminds me I have to end this and finish some things on my "Honey Do" list my wife posted on the refrigerator...

Top 10 reason why humans like lists:

Linear
Eye Catching
Digestible
Succinct
Organizational ('todo' list)
Convincing (list of offenses in court)
Comprehensive (this list isn't)
Practical
Transferable (work list)
Trackable (shopping list)

IT isn't fun anymore!

2007-03-15T17:14:00.000-05:00

To some, information technology (IT) was never fun; IT was and is the realm of Dilbertian nerds and pointy-haired bosses. However, for some of us, IT was fun and still is! However, if you're of the "IT isn't fun anymore" ilk then read the article "How to Stop the Dilbertization of IT" by Deborah Perelman

Living under a lucky star

2007-03-14T16:13:00.000-05:00

I have, on many occasions, been accused of living under a lucky star. Not wanting to buy into the whole 'luck' paradigm... I may have to agree as I once again find myself in a 'lucky' situation being one of the few programmers in my organization that understand how to effectively use and program for multicore processors. Fortuitous I have to admit in light of the article below.

Where Are the Programmers?
EE Times (03/12/07) Merritt, Rick

At a time when the amount of students pursuing computer science degrees is declining, researchers are struggling with the parallel programming that will run on the next generation of multicore processors.

Ronald Reagan Responsible for Google Putting a Research Lab in Poland?

2007-03-13T18:59:00.001-05:00

While Al Gore may be the self proclaimed creator of the Internet, Ronald Reagan is why Google is putting a research lab in Poland.

Question this statement? Please read on...

Why Google Put a Research Lab in Poland
Christian Science Monitor (03/13/07) Woodard, Colin

Western companies are beginning to notice the value of moving operations to Eastern Europe, where the schools are producing many computer scientists that will work for one-third of the pay of those in Western Europe. The curriculum in many former Soviet-bloc countries is heavily grounded in math, given the former Soviet Union's emphasis on industrial and military production. IBM, Google, and Motorola have all recently opened research labs in Krakow, Poland. "Investment in universities and research in important areas will attract students to these areas, says Google's Kannan Pasupathy. "It's a nice circle which ultimately benefits everybody."

Recall that it was an incident involving Toshiba and the Soviet Union that forced the Reagan administration to use the Combat Command [COCOM] to enforced an international embargo of sensitive technology exports to the Soviet Union.

My colleagues in Krakow, who remember the embargo, tell me:

The universities may be an important factor but one thing that the author of the article is missing is that in fact probably the most important contributor to the high level of skills of Eastern-Bloc computer specialists was in fact the President Ronald Reagan who in the early eighties imposed sanctions, prohibiting the Western Bloc companies to export/share their electronic and computer technology and knowledge. We ended up with software but no manuals, operating systems with no documentations - a situation which forced the entire generation of passionate people [who] got into programming in the late 70s up to late 80s to debug, hack, investigate, figure out, study undocumented code.

And there you have why Ronald Reagan is responsible for Google putting a research lab in Poland.

The SEC strikes back on Pump-and-Dump

2007-03-12T20:14:00.001-05:00

As I described in Where have you gone Aleksey Kamardin the Pump-and-Dump trading fraud appears on the rise. Well the long arm of the SEC has gotten just a bit longer in an attempt to halt this overseas attach on our trading systems.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced March 7 it has won an emergency court order to freeze assets in a Latvian-based bank's trading account that was being used in a high-tech market manipulation scheme.

More on this can be found at Security Watch.

F-22 Raptor DST bug?

2007-03-10T19:54:00.000-06:00

Perhaps not a DST bug, but a time processing bug non the less...

According to the Official Air Force website the F-22 Rapture was delayed in deployment to Kadena.

While en route to Kadena Air Base, Japan, Feb. 10, a software issue affecting the F-22 Raptor's navigation system was discovered.

The Air Force website did not go into more details than that, however CNN Analyst Don Sheppard did,

It is stealthy. It's fast and you want it all to go right on your first deployment to the Pacific and it didn't. At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems... they could have been in real trouble.... they tried to reset their systems, couldn't get them reset. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes.

Gee, what could cause a software program to crash while crossing the international dateline? Perhaps a time of day processing function?

Let me see if I can reproduce such a bug...


#include "time.h"
#include "assert.h"

static time_t last_update = 0;
const time_t now = ::time(0);
double dif = ::difftime( now, last_update );

assert(dif >= 0.0);

// refresh 'status' every minute
if ( 59 < diff) {
    last_update = now;
    // do more useful things...
}

This code assumes that at some point in time while crossing the IDL the F-22 received a clock resync (perhaps from a ground station in Japan?). The code above would cause the system to abort, while crossing the IDL from west to east. I'll leave the reverse case as an exercise to the reader.

As we all prepare for the DST bug to hit our email servers, blackberries, and other systems... be thankful we are not flying in an F-22 Raptor.

Algos Prohibited From Dark Book Access

2007-03-08T18:11:00.000-06:00

Many predicted it, some applaud it, others loathe the decision, but let's face it the battle lines are being drawn between dark books and buy side algos. The latest to throw down the gauntlet is Pipeline Trading Systems. Prior to that ITG-POSIT put the kibosh on algos (later they reconsidered).

Who will win this battle has yet to be determined.

What are the driving forces?

"It's the bandwidth, Stupid!", to paraphrase from a past election.

It takes a significant amount of work to implement, deploy and maintain a dark book (or an open book for that matter). True, it takes a significant amount of work to implement an algorithmic trading platform. However, algos don't face the same rules and regulations (e.g. RegNMS) as do their sell side brethren.

Let's frame this in an old world example...

Imagine a few thousand customers streaming into and out of a 'brick and mortar' store all just 'looking' but not buying. It costs the store owner money to maintain the large sales staff and floor space to handle the customer flow on the hope that someone will actually purchase some goods. If the overwhelming percent of people in the store are just looking, it's a time and money drain driving up costs and driving down revenue.

It's the same with dark books. All those algos add overhead w/o generating revenue (trades).

It takes a serious investment in hardware (servers, routers, databases), and software to support all the buy side algos that are just looking.

Happy Humpday

2007-03-07T22:14:00.000-06:00

Happy Humpday! I said this to a colleague today and she looked at me with a puzzled look on her face. She is from Russia and I'm quite sure she had not heard this term for the day of the week we call Wednesday. This started the small group of us in the office talking about the many different ways to refer to the day of the week we call Wednesday, and since some in the group are not native English speakers we started to compare notes on how to say 'Wednesday' in other languages, and to the etymology of Wednesday.

In German it is Mittwoch (mid week); In French -- mercredi; Italian -- mercoledì (Mercury Day); Danish -- onsdag (Odin's Day); Russian -- sreda (среда); Polish -- sroda (or middle).

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary we in the English speaking world call this day Wednesday because of the viking (Old Norse) word Oðinsdagr (Odin's Day). And there you have it, we call this day Wednesday because of the Vikings.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

2007-03-06T20:50:00.002-06:00

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva Switzerland is slated to start up later this year. According to documents on the LHC website the stored energy per beam is 362 MJ (million joules) at peak (collision) energy. The beams of protons will circulate in opposite directions and collide in a controlled enclosure where physicists will analyze the sub-atomic particles created. The round trip will take just about 100 microseconds (.0001 seconds).

So let's do some quick, back of the cocktail napkin calculations based on a worst case scenario. Imagine that a single proton beam gets out of control and is 'aborted'. This means that 362 million joules are directed into a 'dump' in one machine revolution (.0001 seconds). To convert from power (joules) to energy (watts) we do a simple conversion energy = power per unit time or: 362,000,000 Joules / .0001 second or 3,620,000,000,000 Watts (3.62 trillion watts)! That is (according to Wikipedia) the average energy used by the United States in 2001!

In other words it is slightly less than the energy needed to power 3000 Delorians in Back to the Future (1.21 Gigawatts!).

Does anyone see the problem with this?

Love of Learning

2007-03-05T19:46:00.000-06:00

The English Archaeologist, John Lubbock once wrote:

If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.

I first stumbled onto this quote whilst studying for an Education degree at Colorado State University. This was after I had received my Physics degree from the same institution. I never forgot the quote, but couldn't remember the author. Thank god for Google!

Anyway, back to the point of this blog entry... the love of learning. It seemed to me then as it does now that we spend so much time cramming facts and figures down our gullets that we don't take the time to really appreciate, nor do we really learn to love learning. Sure, we study for twelve plus years as children, then hopefully off to university for more, but along the way do we ever love learning? Or, instead, are we merely caught up in the maelstrom and maladies of the fact cramming masses? Do we take time to really learn how to learn? to think? to reason? How do our educators encourage us to love learning?

One more John Lubbock quote that reminds me of studying in Colorado and the lyrics to a John Denver song:

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

My Inner European is Swedish?

2007-03-03T08:00:00.000-06:00

You Should Learn Swedish

Fantastisk! You're laid back about learning a language - and about life in general.
Peaceful, beautiful Sweden is ideal for you... And you won't even have to speak perfect Swedish to get around!

What Language Should You Learn?

Algorithmic Trading Problems

2007-03-02T20:50:00.000-06:00

My main concern, four years ago, when algorithmic trading became popular was that it is a feed-forward system. The algorithms respond, in near real-time, to changes in electronic signals (bid, offer, trades) hoping to move the market in a direction favorable to the algorithm's goal(s). The problems with feed-forward systems specifically and controller theory in general are well documented and one of the primary problems is the inability of these systems to respond to novel situations like what was experienced this week in the markets.

I have worked in the financial markets the past seven years, and before that spent nearly ten years in the high energy physics research environment of Fermilab. I was more than a bit concerned when I started seeing algorithmic trading specifications, typically using the FIX protocol, show up on my desk about two years ago. My concerns center around the general lack of training most programmers receive regarding loop control and controller theory.

Therefore, this week when the markets started to fluctuate, in novel ways, I was not surprised when technical snafus at NYSE, Dow Jones and Arca started the electronic trading version of a microphone placed too close to a speaker. I have to wonder, but will probably never know, what role algorithmic trading engines contributed to the inflated tick volumes observed this week?

Momentum of Life

2007-02-28T18:44:00.000-06:00

In Life, as in Physics, a change in momentum, a change in direction, requires a force; and when a force is applied it can lead to stress.

The good Sir Isaac Newton said it best

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

In Physics, stress is the application of a force (shear, compression, pressure) on a material (solid, liquid or gas).

These principles are the same in everyday life. To change direction in life requires the application of a force, or stress. The life changing force can come internally or externally.

Want to lose weight? A change in direction (eating less, working out more) must take place, i.e. a force must be applied.

Who hasn't felt the stress (force) of changing careers (quiting the old job, training for the new, interviews, etc)? Or felt the stress of changing financial direction (momentum)?

In life, as in Physics, changes in directions require a force.

Cranky Old Men

2007-02-27T20:22:00.000-06:00

There is a new twist on the search engine game, cRANKy.com. Now, I have to say up front that I'm not a cranky old man, but the definitive vote is left for my wife to cast and really, that's the only vote that counts. According to cRANKy.com it's the first age-relevant search engine. Apparently you have to be 50+ years old to really appreciate the services provided by cRANKy.com.

The top ten searches on cRANKy.com (today) are:

If you toss out #2, 7 and 10 I don't see how this differs from google?

Is anyone surprised by number 1, sex?

What an odd mix to see Rachel Ray on the same list with Helen Mirren! Or is it? I think so.

I'm just a bit curios to find out what is involved with an escorted train tour. Is it anything like the escorted train tour Tom Cruise and Rebbecca De Mornay had in Risky Business? I could only hope so... but that gets us back to number 1 again!

The Blackbox Window Manager

2007-02-25T08:25:00.000-06:00

Of all the X11R6 window managers to run (fvwm, gnome, kde) why Blackbox?

It's a matter of size, and yes size matters. However, this time it's a matter of small is beautiful. Normally I like the KDE window manager (for not so obvious reasons), but mostly run gnome on my Ubuntu developer box. However, for my rather old and outdated Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop, the one I'm using to write this blog, It's limited in resources (see previous post). I like this old extremely outdated Inspiron. It may not be the lightest but it's a workhorse and I have had it for close to a decade. That fact alone speaks volumes about the quality of Dell products and the loyalty component in my social DNA (or that I'm just too frugal for my own good).

Back to what started me writing this post...

Blackbox was the smallest, most full featured window manager I could run on FreeBSD. Okay, fvwm will give it a run for the money but I've never liked the fat frames in fvwm. But today, I finally got around to cleaning up the Blackbox menu and removed all the items that don't apply to FreeBSD running in this limited environment (my Dell not Blackbox).

Here's what I did to remove from the Start Menu things like StarOffice or Mozilla Navigator that are not installed on the massive 4Gb hard drive:

copy the default Blackbox menu file to my local directory (e.g. /cpusr/share/blackbox/menu .)
change the write protection (chmod 666 ./menu)
edit the file (e.g. vi ./menu) and remove entries like

[exec] (StarOffice) {soffice}
[exec] (Acroread) {acroread}

save the file
edit the .blackboxrc file and point it to the local menu file

session.menuFile: ./menu

save the file
right click on the desktop and tell Blackbox to Reconfigure

That's it. Now I have a custom start menu for Blackbox.

R.I.P.

2007-02-24T20:30:00.001-06:00

We see the initials R.I.P (Rest In Peace; latin: requiescat in pace) on many grave stones. Perhaps we need to R.I.P long before we are deceased.

However, for me R.I.P has come to mean something else entirely different. Having just gone through an employer/employee goal setting session this week, it put me in a reflective mood. So here's an alternative definition for R.I.P. -- Retrospection, Introspection and Prospection.

There is an old Jewish story that asks the question "Where have you come from and where are you going?" Good questions for today's hustle and bustle lifestyle. I like to use the hour long trip into and out of Chicago each morning/evening to contemplate my place in the universe.

Retrospection -- a looking back to what was and how things have changed (hopefully for the good); looking back at what was done (noble or not) and what others have done;
Introspection -- a looking inward to insure that thoughts, ideas, motives and desires are properly aligned
Prospection -- a looking ahead in anticipation of what might be; hope for tomorrow

I hope all who read this will R.I.P.

Time-Zoned

2007-02-23T20:47:00.001-06:00

The old song Working 9 to 5 seems like a life of luxury in today's global world is flat economy. According to the Financial Calendar website the intense pressures of electronic trading is now available in nearly 600 financial centers around the globe.

The ECBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) starts trading here in Chicago at about 18:30 hours (00:30 UTC) and runs overnight. About 07:30 Central European Time (06:30 UTC) the Eurex and other European exchanges start trading. Factor in the Asian markets like the Jasdaq and voilà you now have a near zero window of opportunity for scheduled downtime and we must manage support staff in multiple call centers working accordingly "around the clock".

In order to meet these demands, Blackberries, wireless networks, laptops and all things electronic continue to increase without bound. CEOs, CIOs, CTOs and the like push their staff harder to meet the increasing demands of the traders who want access to these markets. Am I complaining? Not me... I'm laughing all the way to the bank.

An all too familiar example of this lifestyle is found in Time-Zoned: How to Cope With a Round-the-Clock Workday by Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal Online.

As a friend said in college "Pressure makes diamonds".

A Bad Case of Nigeritis

2007-02-22T19:51:00.002-06:00

While on a trip to Barbados, for a friend's wedding, my wife and I were eating breakfast at our hotel (The Savannah Hotel). Having just finished breakfast we were sitting back and enjoying the warm ocean breeze and the gorgeous ocean view. We were approached by one of the women working in the outdoor dining room who had come over to take our plates away. We were totally shocked when she said, with her Bajan accent,

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you two have a bad case of nigeritis".

Now let me backtrack a bit. I was raised in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and the 'N' word was just not used in public! If it was, it was frowned on! So imagine our surprise when our hostess said what she did. Not sure I heard what I heard I asked,

"Excuse me, what did you say?"

to which she repeated herself a bit louder,

"You two look like you have a bad case of nigeritis".

I paused, hesitated some more and said with a puzzled look,

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

To which she explained the definition of nigeritis (a sleepy feeling after a meal; contented; satisfied; sweet).

Having spent forty years associating the 'N' word with negative connotations we were jaw dropping shocked, but after the explanation, we had to agree with the diagnosis; we really did have a bad case of nigeritis.

Later, after the wedding, I repeated this story for my friend from Barbados. He laughed and then furthered our education by telling us that in Barbados you can buy "Niger Peppers" -- a sweet pepper.

You're never too old to expand your lexicon and challenge those preconceived ideas!

Women in Science

2007-02-21T18:49:00.000-06:00

The retired IBM scientist Frances E. Allen whose pioneering work in the field of compilers will receive the Association for Computing Machinery's A.M. Turing Award. Allen is the first woman to receive this honor -- the highest honor in computer science.

Allen worked for IBM in the late 1950s where she taught a new language, FORTRAN, to IBM scientists.

"There is an image about our profession that doesn't appeal to women, which is a shame because women in our field are just fabulous. They're great researchers. They're great leaders. There just aren't enough of them. This has been an issue for many years." -- ACM CEO John White.

Blogger's note: Young women, for many reasons, are turned away from science at the middle school (junior high school) level. To combat this trend I suggest reading 4000 Years of Women in Science and doing what you can to encourage more women into the sciences. It is our culture that is turning these great talents away, not their desire nor their abilities.

What are you willing to pay for online security?

2007-02-20T19:38:00.001-06:00

According to Trend Micro there are black market al a carte menus available for hackers to buy/sell our personal information. Here's what some are willing to pay for our 'private parts':

Trojan program to steal online account info: $980-4900
Credit Card number w/ PIN: $490
Billing data (SSN, address, birth date, etc): $78-294
Drivers license: $147
Birth Record: $147
SSN card: $98
Credit card number w/ security code and expir-date: $6-24
PayPal account uname and pwd: $6

What can we do and what are we willing to pay to fight this?

Here's a simple recommendation; If we aren't willing to use a crypto-card, or random password generator when doing online banking or accessing retirement accounts, we're part of the problem, not the solution.

Anything I have to do that absolutely, positively has to be secure involves an RSA secure ID. This little gem of device forces me to use a different, pseudo-random password every time I log on. It also makes it easier for me to remember my password, and not compromise security by writing down on a sticky note some reminder.

If we continue to ignore the price hackers are willing to pay for our private parts, we will continue to be a part of the problem, not a solution. Insist on the best of security when doing online banking. Ask your bank and retirement services to provide the best.

Google Notebook Rocks!

2007-02-19T19:48:00.001-06:00

Where was I when Google Notebook came out? Asleep I would imagine. Wow! What a great service. Notebook came out in May of 2006. It has been recently updated to include sharing, drag and drop, trashing and undoing as well as access to it from your Google 'homepage'.

Why do I like Google Notebook? One word... bookmarks.

What's wrong with bookmarks?

I have a set on my laptop (OS: FreeBSD; browser: Firefox). I have another set on my office workstation (OS: WinXP; browser: Firefox). I have yet another set on my home workstation (OS: Ubuntu; browser: Firefox). Now each set of bookmarks are unique to what I am doing on the computer in question. Work: Windows API links. Laptop: BSD Links. Home: Unix programming tips.

So what makes Google Notebook so very cool is that it allows me to share 'bookmarks' across servers. Now I can even share them with friends via my Google homepage.

Rest in peace Dr. Adler

2007-02-18T08:46:00.000-06:00

The Austrian born Dr. Robert Adler (1913-2007), the co-inventor w/ Eugene Polley (both were working for Zenith) of the wireless TV remote control, passed away February 15th. The remote control device, called the Space Command (1956), used ultrasonic waves (remote control devices now use infrared radiation).

If it wasn't for his work, during World War II, on high-frequency magnetostrictive oscillators, we may never have been able to sit on our couch and flip through an ever increasing selection of channels, nor would we be able to control our iBook w/ that pretty white control fob.

IEEE link to Dr. Robert Adler

Dynamic Code Obfuscation

2007-02-17T06:48:00.001-06:00

Yet another way for malicious software to spawn, spread and infect.

According to Finjan, Dynamic Code Obfuscation (DCO) also known as Dynamic Code Mutation is "A method for hackers to place malicious software onto computers, keeping the code hidden from antivirus software. Infected computers contain software with a unique set of functions and parameter names. Since the code exists differently on each infected machine, antivirus vendors cannot issue a single virus signature to disrupt the malicious code."

What does this mean in practical terms? Let's pretend I wanted to write a virus (I don't but play along) I would write something like the following (I'll use C to do this, but it appears that Java Script/Java is the leading language for self obfuscation):



void malicious_function_that_will_delete_files(void)
{
// do something evil...
}

int main(void)
{
malicious_function_that_will_delete_files();
return 0;
}

Now if I wanted to defeat this 'virus' I would need an antivirus (AV) vendor like Symantic - Norton Antivirus or McCafee VirusScan Plus or AVG Anti Virus to create a definition file and have it uploaded, in the latest online update, to my antivirus software database, and tell the AV software to scan files for the character string malicious_function_that_will_delete_files();.

Now, no self respecting virus author (oxymoron?) would write a virus like this because an AV product would be able to easily scan a file for the telltale signature of malicious_function_that_will_delete_files(); and quarantine the program.

What DCO brings to the table is the ability for the software to mutate, like a real virus, in an attempt to avoid detection. Imagine that the same 'virus' written above could mutate into:

void ed83ff2005016de843553f10e65ce617() { // do something evil } int main(void) { ed83ff2005016de843553f10e65ce617() return 0; }

and ship this new version, through your infected computer, to another computer on your network.

The AV is now defeated with an outdated definition file because the AV is looking for the character string malicious_function_that_will_delete_files(); and now has to also scan files for ed83ff2005016de843553f10e65ce617();

What is needed, and is available, is behavioural code analysis antivirus software. However, the cost of running this new type of behavioural analysis is speed. It takes CPU cycles and delays packets being sent out over the wire. Will most 'normal' users notice this? Perhaps not. Those of us who make a living writing high performance, low latency networked applications will feel the impact.

Do we need better antivirus software, better desktop operating systems or better hardware (routers, switches, etc)?

Dear Number

2007-02-16T19:23:00.000-06:00

I thought it was nice touch to receive an email like the one below that arrived from CIO magazine and addressed to a number. Oops! Someone in the subscription department is looking for work...

Dear 80535,

It’s a time of extraordinary transformation for IT organizations. Is the CIO role changing along with it? This year’s CIO Role survey will probe that question, and the editors of CIO Insight Magazine, a Ziff Davis Media publication, cordially invite you to participate. We’ll focus on CIOs’ backgrounds, responsibilities, success factors and compensation, but with a special emphasis on changes taking place now or likely to take place in coming years. As always, your individual responses will remain confidential.

Drinking from the Well of Nostalgia

2007-02-15T16:38:00.000-06:00

The "good ole days" were just old. That's what dad use to say anyway. Then again, he grew up in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the 1930s and 40s. Drinking from the Well of Nostalgia leads to stagnation. It is the death of adventure and discovery. Only drink in small doses to illuminate progress, not to satisfy a thirst. Rest in peace Pappy; can't believe it's been eleven years.

Software Suffocation

2007-02-14T20:23:00.001-06:00

In an interview with Technology Review titled The Problem with Programming, Bjarne Stroustrup states

A lot of thinking about software development is focused on the group, the team, the company. This is often done to the point where the individual is completely submerged in corporate "culture" with no outlet for unique talents and skills. Corporate practices can be directly hostile to individuals with exceptional skills and initiative in technical matters. I consider such management of technical people cruel and wasteful.

If this is true I wonder how many CIOs and CTOs would agree or disagree with a statement like that?

I have found that the following options help to alleviate the suffocation.

find some non-work related software project to do either at home or, with prior approval, on the job. Most good managers realize that 'play' time is important to health and well being.

For example, whilst riding the train to/from Chicago, I wrote a Sudoku problem solver in C++ using dancing links. Solving Sudoku puzzles has absolutely nothing to do with electronic trading or does it?

Perhaps join an open source project (check w/ your supervisor to avoid breaking that conflict of interest document you signed!)

ask to be put on a non-production prototype project where your talents and ideas may be beneficial.
wander around the office (sea of cubes?) and find out what others are working on and see if they need help (assuming you are not shackled to your cube and have a few personal CPU cycles to devote).

Agree? Disagree? Let me know how you solve your Software Suffocation problems.

Hackers! What a waste!

2007-02-12T21:33:00.001-06:00

I keep seeing errors, in my FreeBSD/Apache webserver log (/var/log/httpd-errors), of the type: POST /_vti_bin/_vti_aut/fp30reg.dll HTTP/1.1" 401 517. According to NSFOCUS these are a Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions Buffer Overflow Vulnerability attacks on my webserver. Really? this exploit is nearly six years old. Guess old habits die hard? Thanks again Micro$oft for enabling so many hackers and criminals. Will Vista be any better?

FreeBSD on Dell Inspiron 3500

2007-02-11T10:56:00.001-06:00

When Micro$oft decided to end support for Win98 my old laptop, a Dell Inpirion 3500, seemed destined for the recycle center. It was still in good shape and all the peripherals worked (CD, dual batteries, floppy, etc). So I didn't just want to toss it out. Upgrading to Win2K was not an option because of the limited resources (400Mhz processor and 4Gb hard drive).

Instead I installed FreeBSD 6.1 (later upgraded to 6.2) and added the BlackBox window manager (pkg_add -r blackbox). I'm sitting here editing this blog from my laptop. Admittedly FreeBSD is not a 'normal' choice for an ex-WinDoze system, but having worked with FreeBSD at Fermilab it was not completely unfamiliar either. I can run the command line interface (useful for home network admin tasks) with as little as 20Mb of memory (the laptop only has 64Mb). The 4Gb hard drive is still 75% free after the install.

Running X windows w/ the BlackBox (/usr/ports/x11-wm/blackbox) window manager and Firefox 1.5 requires only 60Mb! Factor in the zero cost for FreeBSD and Firefox and this old laptop will still be in the house for the foreseeable future.

For a 'simple' networked device that gets used on weekends and evenings to browse the web (in an ultra secure OS) I can't complain! Heck I'm so happy with this system I had to tell others.

Where have you gone Aleksey Kamardin?

2007-02-11T07:18:00.001-06:00

The Security and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Florida college student Aleksey Kamardin charging him with fraudulent trading activities, commonly referred to as pump-and-dump. In the complaint it states that Mr. Kamardin made about $83k. The St. Petersburg Times states Kamardin made about $15k in three hours trading St. Petersburg-based Cyber Defense Systems Inc. (CYDF). To pull this off Kamardin, with help from others hacked into online trading accounts and used these accounts to trade illegally. The money transferred into and out of many accounts in the US, Russia and Latvia.

This is not the most recent SEC investigation into pump-and-dump trading. Most recently, in December 2006, the SEC filed a complaint against the Estonian Evgeny Gashichev for activities with his own company Grand Logistic.

Kamardin has since fled (the country?) and some believe he is hiding in Russia.

So what are the online brokerage firms doing to prevent this? How are they making their client accounts more safe?

The Freedom To Doubt

2007-02-09T20:16:00.002-06:00

While clearing out a bookshelf, I rediscovered a series of three lectures given by the Physicist Richard P. Feynman. A truly remarkable man indeed. Below is an excerpt from the first of these three lectures (given in April 1963).

Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences... If we were not able or did not desire to look in any new direction, if we did not have a doubt or recognize ignorance, we would not get any new ideas.
The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and I believe, in other fields. It was born of a struggle. It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt , to be unsure. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations.

Why I hate software

2007-02-06T19:45:00.000-06:00

While trying to archive an email message on google (gmail) it generated an error message "Oops... the system was unable to perform your operation (error code 602). Please try again in a few seconds." Now normally I have few complaints w/ google or gmail because by and large "it just works". However after a particularly frustrating day wrestling w/ my own software and software from others at the office I had had it! Yes, true to the error message, I was able to archive the message. Perhaps I should be more forgiving, considering I make a living from software, but I'm not. I believe that software should be infinitely difficult to configure incorrectly. It should be, conversely, "hung over from the Christmas party at 4am" easy to use, configure and install. Have I achieved that with the products I write? Nope. So I should be more forgiving but I refuse to allow my lack of planning, my poor planning to ruin the customer's experience. I'm paid to think of failures and plan for them, all of them. Harsh? Yep. Perhaps it's a calculated behavior serving as a stark contrast to the lackadaisical image some in the industry are fond of displaying.

Copenhagen Top Ten (or not?)

2007-02-05T19:57:00.001-06:00

On a recent trip my wife and I took to Copenhagen (her first European trip) we comprised our top ten things we DIDN'T expect to see in Copenhagen (Denmark in general).

10. So many bicycles (Kim). Bikes we expected... but double decker bike racks at the train stations?
9. Witch at the Hovedbanegården (Keith). I swear I saw a witch right out of a Macbeth!
8. Roskilde teenagers (both) -- we 'planned' our trip to Roskilde right before the music festival (oops)
7. Fruit stands on the street (Kim).
6. 7-11s everywhere! (both). When did this happen? Guess there are worse American exports (see #2).
5. Guy wearing a dress on the Strøget (Keith). The combat boots 'made' the dress! I do hope he was wearing a slip but suspect I am wrong.
4. A "Sister" cleaning the rooms in our hotel. (both). She even had an accent from the islands.
3. Two gay guys in Rosenburg Gardens (Keith). "Not that their is anything wrong with THAT"... but come on... get a room! I would say the same if it were a heterosexual couple too. That much 'free love' needs a room.
2. Hummer (both). Even in America an H2 Hummer is large... seeing one in downtown Copenhagen, it's obscenely large!
1. Graduation Caps (both). These caps rock! Graduation caps in America suck compared to these!

The Danish love affair with twenty...

2007-02-04T15:20:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure of the origin, nor are many Danes I suspect, but I noticed that the Danes, like the French(?), have a love affair with the number twenty! It is almost forgotten these days, I suspect, but a quick list of their numbers, with the full name, makes this more evident:

The numbers, after forty, are mutiples of twenty.

20 -- tyve
30 -- tredive
40 -- fyrre
50 -- halvtreds (halvtredsindstyve) lit. half from three times twenty ('sind' means times).
60 -- tres (tresindtyve) lit. three times twenty
70 -- halvfjerds (halvfjerdsindstyve) lit. half from four times twenty
80 -- firs (firsindtyve) lit. four times twenty
90 -- halvfems (halvfemsindtyve) lit. half from five times twenty

I'd rather throw an exception

2006-01-24T07:47:00.000-06:00

Why throw exceptions? (as opposed to using error codes)
When to throw an exception.
When not to throw an exception.

Any condition that prevents a method/function from completing its designed objective should result in an exception being thrown. These conditions can arise from invalid input data (a precondition error) or a failure to generate valid output data (return values, class invariants, etc).

For a more complete explanation read:

When and How to Use Exceptions

C/C++ Users Journal August, 2004

A clear, objective, and measurable answer to the question: "When, for what, and how should you use exceptions?"

By Herb Sutter

Read Herb Sutter's Article on CUJ for more information

Dog Food Doctorine

2006-01-24T07:33:00.000-06:00

Peter Coffee raises a good question:

At what point does a software/hardware project go from tons of bugs to good to go?

As for me I have to ask Who makes these decisions? and What say do we software developers have in this matter?

Top-tier toolmakers may not be their own best testers.

By Peter Coffee

Like many others who'd long awaited Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005, I felt more than a little let down when that development suite shipped without the full-spectrum
collaboration tools that we'd been told to expect among its most distinctive improvements. Microsoft now assures us that the Team Foundation Server (TFS) is forthcoming:
Sources tell eWEEK's Darryl Taft to expect it in the first quarter of this year.

I get a queasy feeling, though, from a combination of comments by Visual Studio Team System Lead Program Manager Jeff Beehler, who told us all on his blog last week that (i) "we've been fixing tons of bugs" and (ii) "we're only fixing the most critical of issues to help prevent regressions."

Does that give anyone else a sense of "uh-oh"? There's plenty of room for debate about the precise behavior of bug discovery rates as the number of remaining defects in code shrinks down, but I don't know of any model that estimates a sharp and sudden cutoff between "tons of bugs" and "good to go."

Even assuming that the quality of the code will meet our hopes--and even, perhaps, exceed our expectations--I was struck by another assumption implied in comments about the
imminent Team Foundation Server release. Darryl's story mentions a blog post by Microsoft developer division VP "Soma" Somasegar, citing the degree to which the team that's building
the company's life cycle tools is using those tools itself--"eating its own dog food," as the common saying goes.

Read the rest of Peter's column.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1914426,00.asp

2006 electronic trading predictions

2006-01-03T07:49:00.000-06:00

Larry Tabb, founder and CEO of the TABB Group, predicts the following seven trends for 2006

Exchange and market infrastructure redesign because of Reg NMS, Instinet's acquisition by NASDAQ, NYSE-Archipelago merger and MiFID
Move toward low-touch services as both buy and sell continue algorithmic/automated execution infrastructure to lower cost
Increased data velocity will force lagging firms to rebuild their market instrastructure
Research unbundling. He cites London's PS05/9 and the Fidelity/Lehman deal as examples
Derivatives play a larger role in hedge fund, investment managers and B/D's look to redefine risk
Push to develop consolidated delivery and processing platforms to better serve clients
Consolidation will continue to drive the industry

shamed by simplicity

2006-01-01T17:03:00.000-06:00

I'm shamed by the simplicity of the idea put forth by the million dollar homepage. Guess I'll have to make million the hard way.