tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63026928578031725062024-03-12T19:11:46.848-07:00Central DogmaTechnical details about programming and biology. View points on politics, science, and entertainment.Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-55406236322052362472013-05-15T10:18:00.000-07:002013-05-15T10:18:03.924-07:00Unjustified Mysticism<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I have a great deal of interest in the subject of consciousness. It is a quality that is vastly important, but poorly understood. Many times I have stayed up late at night watching Youtube videos or reading web article on scientific theory and research into the subject. There will be a post about the subject eventually. But for right now, I'd like to talk about something else.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">As I combed the web, it became apparent that pseudoscience had taken a liking to the subject of consciousness. Whereas science adhered to known biological and physical theories and adhered to the scientific method (propose theory, experiment to test theory), pseudoscience completely avoided any know scientific theories and lacks any supporting evidence, instead choosing to discuss the topic from a subjective view. I suppose the lack of understanding and formal theories around consciousness has made it a breeding ground for pseudoscience.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Go do a search for videos on "consciousness" and you will find many, many videos from this point of view. They're the ones with pretty graphics of space or nature rather than someone speaking in front of a classroom. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLwnqDvlXqI">One video</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;"> in particular caught my eye, though. It's a clip from an episode of ABC's Face-Off of an exchange between Deepak Chopra and Sam Harris.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Deepak Chopra: "I believe that there is a transcendent core consciousness that is comprised of meanings, contexts, relationships, archetypal ideas that recycles itself." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Sam Harris: "So it's in no sense a product of the brain." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Chopra: "It's no sense a product of the brain and our whole endeavor in spiritual discipline is to go actually beyond that personal consciousness, that ego consciousness so we can identify with that transcendent reality which is the source of space, time, energy and anything else that exists." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Notice the vocabulary that Chopra uses. "Meanings", "contexts", "relationships". All very personal, subjective ideas. You can't measure them, and that works towards pseudoscience's advantage. You can't disprove that which can't be measured. Chopra then goes on to divorce the concept of consciousness entirely from any know theories of biology or physics and something presents something of an <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AssimilationPlot">Assimilation Plot</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">. Nowhere does he present a competent explanation for the spiritual consciousness, theories that could be tested. It works to pseudoscience to keep things vague, to keep them untestable.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">And the last part of that exchange is perhaps the most interesting. Consciousness “is the source of space, time, energy and anything else that exists”. You can see more of this way of thinking at <a href="http://intentblog.com/deepak-chopra-reality-making-and-the-gift-of-self-awareness/">this article</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;"> penned by Mr. Chopra: "Every quality in the outside world exists because you create the quality. Your brain is not the creator – it’s the interpreter and deliverer. The real creator is mind. It will likely take more to convince you that you are creating all of reality. We understand." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">It is his theory that it is our consciousness that gives rise to reality. He’s not far off, but there’s a big distinction to make: It is our consciousness that gives rise our interpretation of reality. It’s actually pretty easy to test Mr. Chopra’s theory. Have you ever been wrong? Perhaps you sat on a chair expecting it hold your weight, but instead it collapsed. If your consciousness was truly giving rise to the physical universe, this would be impossible. In your mind, the chair would hold your weight, thus the reality created would be such. Even young children understand this. Just because you don’t understand fire, does not mean it will not burn you.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">And Deepak Chopra is not the only one espousing this theory. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of <a href="http://www.landmarkeducation.com/landmark_forum_course_syllabus">The Landmark Forum</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">. They are at worst an opportunistic pyramid scheme and at worse a cult. They too buy into the “reality as a creation of the mind” mythology: "We observe not so much the particulars of the realities we construct, but that it is human to construct such realities, and then forget that we are the ones who constructed them."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I think it’s more telling what they say latter on the page: "We explore choice as a profoundly human ability to create. When choice is understood and known in this way, what had previously seemed simply part of “the way things are” – inevitable or impervious to change – appears in a new light." And that’s really what is at the center of this pseudoscience mess: choice. What better carrot on a stick to those disenfranchised, depressed masses than choice. “You need not live life as a looser; you can choose a different reality.” Perhaps there’s even a little Social Darwinism in that thinking. “Your life is only bad because you are making that reality.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">But that’s not really true. Sure you can change your outlook on life, change your action in the world. It certainly doesn’t hurt to look at things from a new perspective. But no amount of belief will change your physical reality. You can not muster a home out of your consciousness, nor a happy family. Fire will always burn you. Belief alone will not make those things such. Sometime bad things happen for no reason. No one’s consciousness created it. Meaning can’t be found in everything. That is the nature of reality.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps it is a bit depressing to think in those terms. But you can still affect this world. You have agency as much as anyone else. However that doesn’t excuse pseudoscience from pushing a false hope that helps only swindler.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I think Mr. Harris phrased it best Mr. Chopra in that episode Face-Off:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Chopra: "You are so dismissive of subjective experience, which has given rise to poetry to music to art. I am saying that the whole universe is imbued with subjectivity" </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Harris: "There is nothing more important than subjectivity. It's all we could possibly care about. The changes in our conscious experience have some relation to the physical universe." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Chopra: "Absolutely, they give rise to the physical universe." </span></div>
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Harris: "That is a statement of metaphysics that is totally unjustified and could not possibly be justified".</span></blockquote>
</span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-47020047731114951842013-05-08T12:55:00.000-07:002013-05-08T12:55:39.243-07:00The Perils of a Long Transit<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I live a few hours from a major city. Consequently, I saw a lot of job offers available in the area. One such was a small business I had multiple interviews with. About 3 if I recall correctly.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">This means getting up quite early, putting on my spiffy suit and traveling on public transit for a few hours. This also meant a considerable expenditure on my part, as small businesses aren’t going to pay an interviewer for transit.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">There was more than once that I was stuck at the transit hub waiting for the next ride out or the next interview to start.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">In the end I didn’t get the position. On the plus side, one time as I walked down one of the crowed city streets in my full suit, a stranger told me I looked “cool”.</span></div>
Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-56416542208253583552013-05-07T10:11:00.000-07:002013-05-07T10:11:30.684-07:00Spam: Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; page-break-before: always;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Spam: Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages?</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I meant to post this as part of the post on AI, but I felt that some of this information fell out of the scope of that post. So, why the post on spam? Well, it something all of us has run into in some way and it makes a wonderful case study, as you are about to find out.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I’m sure most of you have at one time or another looked at you inbox, found the countless spam messages, and though “why?”. What could these spammers, who go to such extreme lengths as to compromises other’s computers to add to their bot-nets, possibly hope to gain? Well, like most things, it boils down to money. Garry Pejski has an interesting DEFCON presentation on his <a href="http://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives/dc-18-archive.html#Pejski">time as a malware developer</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">. Some reputable company, say GM or IKEA, will want to advertise their product or service in the hopes of attracting more customers. Another reputable middleware company, say Google, creates ads for these companies for a price and offers others a cut of this money if they display these ads on their website or product. Here’s the problem, some unscrupulous individuals look to capitalize on these offers by having others view as many of these ads as possible, whether they would actually buy any of these products or not.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">There are other reasons why spammers are doing what they’re doing. Some could be trying to perform a phishing attack. But, here a more interesting case, also coming out of DEFCON, by Grant Jordan on <a href="http://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives/dc-17-archive.html#Jordan">the use of spam to affect the stock market</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">. A spammer buy a stock, spams others to buy that stock, and then sells when it hits its height. Some interesting things brought up in this study: similar looking ads came from same spammer and would usually perform the same. Also, due to the advent of spam catching techniques, text based spam never worked. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Spam filtering is actually a highly intellectual field of computer science. It relies on computer learning, but there are two ways it can be preformed, using classification in the case of supervised learning or using clustering in the case of unsupervised learning. Both use features of a message (tokens that occur, number of capital letters)to add it to a group with similar features. In the case of classification, training data provides examples of the groups (spam and non-spam), while clustering uses input data to define groups and may only require the number of clusters to start the algorithm.</span></div>
Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-61154689814431272712013-04-01T09:58:00.000-07:002013-04-01T09:58:30.725-07:00Artificial Intelligence: Finding Ourselves<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17.6pt; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I suppose you’ve heard of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17jeopardy-watson.html">Watson</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #00000a;">, the Jeopardy playing robot. It’s a great case study for artificial intelligence. Watson has an almost limitless amount of information at its disposal (several terabytes). But, yet it gets things wrong. How is this possible? Consider the question </span><span style="color: black;">“Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest for a World War II battle”. Watson’s response: “</span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Toronto</span><span style="color: black;">”. Watson kind of works like a search engine, it gives a weight to key words in the question and the categories. It makes adjustments based on previous answers and produces a set of results it chooses from. So, it does a search for airports, people in WW2, battles in WW2, and cities. Then it combines, weighs them appropriately and produces an answer. The answer was probably right, but not “right”, the game show is US based and therefore a US answer is more likely.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The problem is universal to computers, they lack the basic assumptions you and I have. When I say a person X is dead, people understand what that means, a person that is dead is no longer animated and will always remain dead. But if you tell a computer that (say, in Prolog) it doesn’t understand that, I just assigns “person X” the value “dead”. Computer learning can help, but as with Watson, it can’t make this problem disappear.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">One of the greatest problems facing the field of artificial intelligent is figuring out how to determine intelligence. One of the early computer scientists interested in this question was Alan Turing, who proposed the Turing Test. The idea was, essentially, if a person, through conversation, could not differentiate between a computer and a person, that computer was capable of thought. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">An interesting aside about Alan Turing. Although a brilliant scientist, he was sentenced to chemical castration for being a homosexual as was the law in Britain during the time. Unable to live with the treatment, he committed suicide by ingesting an apple laced with cyanide. Rumor is, Apple’s iconic logo is in tribute to Alan Turing’s contribution to the field of computer science. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Back on track, there are several problems with the Turing Test. In practice, human judges become too suspicious and end up actually rating several humans as bots. In theory, there is the Chinese Room. In this theory, a man sits in a room with a book with responses to Chinese symbols. Chinese characters are passed to the man in the room and, after consulting the book, the man jots down the response and passes it out of the room. The theory holds that even though the outside observer may believe the box to know Chinese, the man inside the box does not actually “know” Chinese. Similarly, a computer just follows instructions (a program) and can never really “know” things.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Well, it’s an interesting view, but lets take the example a little further. The book that our man would be consulting would be very large, it would need to responded to every inquiry one could make in Chinese. Our man is only doing the simple work of finding and responding. Essentially our book plus man combo, and not the man alone, would be able the Turing Test. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps the problem isn’t the question we’re asking, but rather understanding what we’re trying to find in the first place. Perhaps the question should be: What is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness">consciousness</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">? It’s a question philosophers have grappled with for some time. Some define it as self awareness, emotions, or, if you’re religious, a soul. The best way that I have found to describe it is “our first person perspective”. When your body experiences something, your body does not just respond with a reflex “you” feel it. This raises some interesting questions. How do we know others are conscious, are they intellectual zombies? Are animal? Babies? Those that have undergone brain damage? How can we tell if a computer has gained a consciousness?</span></div>
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">If a computer did become conscious, how would people react? Looking at popular fiction, some might accept it, as in Neuromancer, others may look to prevent it’s existence, as in Ghost in the Shell. Perhaps some would react in disgust, knowing that something exists like you but “different”. That is certainly the case of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley">Uncanny Valley</a>.</span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-44937016556427494812013-03-29T11:40:00.000-07:002013-03-29T11:40:23.512-07:00Job Search Dos and Don’ts<div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<a href="http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=14935696&resolution=320" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=14935696&resolution=320" usa="true" /></a><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I’m sure you’ve seen one of those articles about “10 tips for job seekers”. They usually speak to some analysts or hiring managers and get some choice quotes about what they thing job seekers should do to improve their odds of finding a job. I actually had an entire college course similar to this. The problem is, hiring isn’t scientific. There’s no “best way” to hire, so different hiring managers will give different answers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">In my course it was explained that the job seeker should always ask for when a hiring decision will be made and if they haven’t heard back by then, they should call back to follow up. My instructor explained that a job seeker should never call before then, because it would be seen as needy or bothersome to the interviewer. About a month into my job search I read an article explaining the same tip. However, the article explained one should call up before the decision date, in order to remind the interviewer of their qualifications. Clearly, these two people have a different job selection process.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">So, with that in mind, I’ll try to avoid specifics, and keep in mind, every interviewer is different.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Always research the company you’re interviewing with. Be informed of recent news and what their business does.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Have questions. There’s always a “do you have any questions” section of the interview. Always have a question, even if it’s “what’s it like to work here”.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Never bring up salary. Until the offer, be as vague as possible about your price. Say you have to research it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Be timely. Arrive on time to interviews, if not early.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">After an interview, send a thank you email to the interviewer. The idea is it will remind the interviewer about you. Don’t be afraid to list some of your qualifications.</span></div>
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Have a 2 minute ad for yourself, as short story about your qualification. In case the interviewer asks to “tell me about yourself” or another open ended question. </span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-33705975312960803762013-03-28T12:36:00.000-07:002013-03-28T12:37:15.803-07:00The Power of C in the Cloud<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">In my last post, I introduced you to the cloud IDE Codenvy. The primarily reason I used it is because it has a simply way to hook into Google App Engine. However, for a more robust cloud IDE, I would recommended <a href="https://compilr.com/">Compilr</a></span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. Compilr has support for many of the languages Codenvy does (Ruby, Java, PHP, Python) but it also has support for Objective-C and C# as well as low level languages like C and C++.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">That last point leads to some interesting results. Because we have access to such low level languages, we can use the Compilr servers for general computing. From what I can tell, the Compilr servers that execute the code are running a Unix-like operating system on x86 hardware. So if you’re in a pinch and need access to a Unix like environment, Compilr can be very useful. I happened to run into such a situation while trying to make use of <a href="http://wolfpsort.seq.cbrc.jp/">WoLF PSORT</a></span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> for a rather long sequence and lacking the necessary Linux PC to compile and run the program locally.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, how do you execute commands on commands on Compilr’s servers? First, create your C++ project. Your program will be run in the “content” folder of your project so if you have any external files you need, place them there:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span></span><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you get an error message when uploading, but you also get “Upload complete”, you upload has finished. Refresh the page for the files to show up in the project panel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The key to our program is the </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">system</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> function. Simply hand it commands to execute and it will do so. To untar our WoLF PSORT file execute the following:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;">system ("tar -zxf WoLFPSORT_package_v0.2.tar.gz");<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #00000a;">Remember to mark the files for execution if nessessary:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;">system ("chmod 777 ./WoLFPSORT_package_v0.2/bin/psortModifiedForWolfFiles/psortModifiedForWoLF");<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #00000a;">There are a few restrictions Compilr has placed on free accounts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #00000a;">First, you are forced to make public project and you are restricted to 50 builds/runs. These aren’t huge problems and you can always create a new account and port code if you go over 50 builds. In fact I have noticed the build counter often reset after refreshing the page, so this never became an issue for me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Second, you are limited to 4000 characters of output. A very simple solution, pipe output into a log file by appending </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">> log.txt</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> to your command:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;">system ("./WoLFPSORT_package_v0.2/bin/psortModifiedForWolfFiles/psortModifiedForWoLF -t ./WoLFPSORT_package_v0.2/bin/psortModifiedForWolfFiles/all.seq > log.txt");<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You may also need to pipe errors and warning, in which case you can log to the same file by appending </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">>log.txt 2>&1</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> to your command. Or you may wish to disable errors and warnings completely while still capturing output, in which you would append the following </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">1>log.txt 2>/dev/null</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> .<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #00000a;">Third, if your program has not accepted input in 40 seconds, it will be terminated. This requires a tricky work around. I ended up spawning a child process to accept input while the parent process was busy. The child process will send an alert for input every 30 seconds. If you choose to do something similar, remember to flush stdout before sleeping. The syntax is as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;">fflush(stdout);<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;">sleep(30); <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Interestingly, this method triggers a security measure when one process exits before the other and will terminate the program. So make sure no process exits before your program has finished doing it’s work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some final points about Compilr:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Much like Codenvy, Compilr has issues with Internet Explorer. I managed to get it working in Firefox.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first compile of every session will fail with “Lost connection to server”. Simply use a dummy application to trigger it and continue your work. If you run an application that takes a long time and it loses connection, it could block you from running further applications until it finishes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Always backup your progress! I can’t stress this enough. If the server that stores the code loses connection to the server that runs the code while “Syncing application data”, you can lose large chunks of your work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Finally, I’ve attached some sample code on the <a href="http://cdogma.herobo.com/compilr.html">download website</a>.</span></div>
Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-69951104314236449172013-03-26T14:10:00.000-07:002013-03-26T14:10:07.962-07:00Programming with Java on Google App Engine<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">I wrote a draft post about Google App Engine many moons ago when it was Python only. As I’m not a Python man, the post isn’t very technical. Anyway, things have changed and GAE now supports Java. Albeit a customized subset of Java, which I’ll go into later.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Google App Engine is a cloud computing service: run your programs on their servers and pay by CPU usage. It’s similar to Amazon’s EC2 and Microsoft’s Azure, but unlike them in there is an absolutely free trial. You’re only required to provide a telephone number when signing up. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Step 1: Create the proper account</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Sign up for a Google account <a href="https://accounts.google.com/SignUp?service=mail">here</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;"> and a Google App Engine account <a href="https://appengine.google.com/">here</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">. After the GAE account is created, you should be prompted to create a new Google App Engine ID.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Now, if you’re like me, I won’t want to have to download and install the various SDKs and IDE to make your GAE app. So, I suggest <a href="https://codenvy.com/">Codenvy</a></span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">. Be sure your logged in to your Google account and click “Connect with Google”. Be sure you’re not using Internet Explorer, Codenvy seems to have issues with it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Step 2: Create a project</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">On the welcome screen, choose “Create a New Project From Scratch”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Choose<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Java Web Application (WAR) -> Google App Engine</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">You have to select the sample project, but you can skip using the JRebel plugin.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Use the Google App Engine ID you just created.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Step 3: Clear out the sample code</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Click the project tab in the left menu (next to the Package Explorer tab)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Delete the src\main\java\com folder. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Delete the src\main\webapp\display.jsp file.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Open src\main\webapp\WEB-INF\web.xml and empty the “servlet” and “servlet-mapping” items. You can add java code to the src\main\java folder at a later time and add the proper information in these tags to specify it as a servlet.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Add the following in the “web-app” item after the “servlet-mapping” item:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;"><welcome-file-list><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></welcome-file-list><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Open src\main\webapp\WEB-INF\appengine-web.xml and make sure the “application” has enclosed your Google App Engine ID</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Customize src\main\webapp\index.jsp as you wish.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Step 4: Run your app on Codenvy servers</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Make sure you save! Codenvy does not auto save changes when building.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Run -> Run Application</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Step 5: Load your app into Google App Engine:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Make sure you save! Again, Codenvy does not auto save changes when building.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Go to Project -> PaaS -> Google App Engine</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">Select Application Update</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">If you get an Oath token error:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">PaaS -> Google App Engine -> Logout</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: Calibri;">PaaS -> Google App Engine -> Login</span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Also, see this <a href="https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/config/cron">link</a> for setting up cron jobs.</span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-90299111329280790732012-08-06T16:57:00.001-07:002012-08-06T16:58:35.535-07:00The Job Search<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’m going to be writing some new
types of posts, and therefore introducing a new tag. They’ll be
about the time I spent on my job search. I’m now (luckily)
employed, but I was on the job market for about 9 months, not
including the job searching I did while in college, and have quite a
few tales to tell.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was speaking to a friend recently
about our job hunting experiences, and the one thing we immediately
agreed upon is that job hunting is a soul crushing experience.
Between making cold calls to doing interviews to following up, it’s
all a massive time sink. The worst of it is, even if you put in all
that time, you have no guarantee of success, just better odds.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The one comfort you can have is this:
You have a skill. If you’re in a technical field and you’ve
gotten proper training, this skill should be easily identifiable and
valuable. Maybe you can program or cook well or can translate another
language. And as a job seeker, this skill will be something employers
are in need of. And if a business is hiring, they obviously have a
need for that skill.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-59188882956439197462012-08-02T17:00:00.000-07:002012-08-02T17:00:56.991-07:00Technological Singularity: an Unrecognizable Future<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Do you ever feel like technology just
moves too fast? I’ve already posted on how technology has past me
by in many ways. But there might be more to it than people falling
behind current trends. There’s the idea of a technologic
singularity.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The technological singularity is an
event in the future when technological progress becomes so rapid that
it makes the future “different”. Central to this concept is the
concept of accelerated change: technologic breakthroughs allow the
next technologic breakthrough to occur sooner and easier. For
instance, our technologic improvements in computers have allowed us
to study genetic data faster and advanced our knowledge in genetics.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://singularity.com/images/charts/thumb_ExponentialGrowthofComputing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" src="http://singularity.com/images/charts/thumb_ExponentialGrowthofComputing.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
(Ignore that calculations per second, they
are a poor measure of intelligence)</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Some interesting consequences occur. As
we build faster computer and create better algorithms, it allows us
to create faster computers and better algorithms. But, that’s
really all just an evolutionary trend, when our computers reach a
high level of AI it will become revolution. It will be a paradigm
shift: a social change so large that will occur and a <a href="http://www.esds1.pt/site/images/stories/isacosta/secondary_pages/10%C2%BA_block1/Generations%20Chart.pdf">new generation</a>
will be created.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And after the singularity? We will be
able to construct machines smarter than us. And in turn, we will
become more intelligent. We will become something else.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Before I finish, I would like to
recommend <a href="http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html">The Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler</a>
as
a look at what our future may become.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-76468955360154723872012-07-16T17:10:00.000-07:002012-07-16T17:10:37.093-07:00Loss LeadersI’m a big fan of Valve’s Steam
service. It took me a while to come around though. Even today I still
keep local copies of all my games in case of a doomsday scenario. It
takes a lot of trust to buy into a Digital Distribution service. Will
they respect their customers, because it’s not like you can take
your library someplace else if they decide to change their Terms of
Service for the worse? Will they remain competitive, or will I have
to start buying from other services and fragment my library? Will I
still be able to access the things I paid for in 10 years?<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the things that push me over the
edge was their amazing sales. Amazing games for just a few dollars.
As someone who was unemployed at the time, or even just price
conscious, it was too good to pass up. The basic idea is loss
leading. Valve, or the publisher, takes a hit on the sale of a game
hoping you’ll come back and buy more games from Steam or from that
franchise. In the end, gaining a returning customer at the cost of a
game that they may have never bought anyway.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
David DeMartini Origin’s, EA’s
competing DD service, boss was asked in <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-06-ea-origin-wont-copy-steam-75-percent-off-sales">an interview</a>
about these sales to which he responded, “We won't be doing that.
Obviously they think it's the right thing to do after a certain
amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property.”
Take from that what you will considering partiality of the speaker.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Valve’s business development chief,
Jason Holtman,<a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-11-valve-counters-eas-steam-sales-cheapen-intellectual-property-accusation"> responded to the criticism</a>,
“If all that were true, nobody would ever pre-purchase a game ever
on Steam, ever again. You just wouldn't. You would in the back of
your mind be like, okay, in six months to a year, maybe it'll be 50
per cent off on a day or a weekend or during one of our seasonal
promotions. Probably true. But our pre-orders are bigger than they
used to be. Tonnes of people, right? And our day one sales are bigger
than they used to be. Our first week, second week, third week, all
those are bigger.”</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What’s underestimated in Holtman’s
response is the importance of the social side of gaming. If all your
friends are playing a game now, you’re more likely to buy it now to
be able to discuss it with them or play it with them. Not to mention,
if you happen to pick up a multiplayer game several months after
launch, your libel to be greeted by many an empty server.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’ve recently started dabbling in
another Digital Distribution service, Amazon MP3. They too have been
a major user of the loss leading tactic. It’s not odd to see a $10
album drop to $3 or songs drop from 99 cents to 25 cents. And boy do
they give away free credit like there’s no tomorrow.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
They too faced scrutiny for their
tactics. One unnamed retailer is quoted in <a href="http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/retail/amazon%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%99s-99-cent-deals-1007566552.story">a report</a>
as saying, “I love it when they have a successful loss leader
pricing deal. I can't stop laughing every time I think about how much
money they must be losing”.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The problem is that music doesn’t
have the same social aspect as gaming. Outside of people who are
really into the technical aspects of music, most really don’t
discuss it beyond “like” or “dislike”. There’s no real
analog to multiplayer in music. So, there’s no pressure to buy
music quickly beyond a few special circumstances like social
gatherings. At the same time, this means the price of music will
generally stay constant over time. What is a 99 cent song now will
remain so for the remained of its life, barring sales.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While Amazon certainly has the money to
keep their MP3 Digital Distribution service afloat for quite some
time, I question how effective their loss leading strategy will be in
the long term.
</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-35994549995506044552012-06-24T12:02:00.000-07:002012-06-24T12:02:08.668-07:00The Scorpion of Baldora Field<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’m not going to do a lot of the
typing this post, this time I have a story. It’s a monolog from
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_on_the_Galactic_Railroad">Night on the Galactic Railroad</a> about
the scorpion of Baldora Field:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Our father told us once about the
scorpion of Baldora Field. The scorpion killed other bugs and ate
them. </i>
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Then one day, a weasel found him.
The scorpion fled, and fell into a deep well. He was trapped, and
knew he'd die.Then, he thought to himself,"How often have l
eaten other creatures? And now, the one time that l was the prey, l
fled in utter terror. And look what came of that. I'll die in this
well, alone."</i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>"Life is filled with
uncertainty. Why didn't l accept my fate? If l had freely given my
life to the weasel, I would have given himanother day of life.But now
my death will help no one. I am useless. Dear Lord, I beg of you,
look into my heart and hear my prayer. In my next life, don't let me
waste myself.Let me use my body for the truehappiness of everyone in
the world."</i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>And then the scorpion burst into
flame: a brilliant crimson glow. And by the light of his burning
body, he lit up the night forever.</i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>How beautiful!</i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I always liked the story. “Put the
others before yourself” is a very nice motto. Even if it has a
subtle communist overtone. The world would probably be a better place
if everyone thought that way. But like the story says, when death has
you in its clutches, even the courageous falter.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
There was a story a few months ago on
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/05/60minutes/main6747002_page3.shtml">60 Minutes</a>
about the cost of end of life care to tax payers. It reminded me of
this story. It’s easy for most to expect the old and sick to accept
their fate and save the tax payers a few dollars, but it’s much
harder to accept it when your time comes.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-56928210245910608502012-04-29T12:49:00.000-07:002012-04-29T12:52:55.798-07:00Web development: HTML, PHP, and SQL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://alighalehban.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/php_mysql_logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="http://alighalehban.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/php_mysql_logo.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
First thing’s first, lets set up our
environment. My IDE of choice is Netbeans, but that’s of little
consequence. Next, <a href="http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/configure-php-environment-windows.html">install your PHP stuff</a>.
Later down the road, when we use MySQL, <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html">these tools will make yourlife a lot easier</a>.
In your php.ini file uncomment - extension=php_curl.dll to activate
curl.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/jonasdias/entry/xampp_with_netbeans">This post will tell you how to set upyour project</a>.
The easiest thing to start with is how to scrape a feed, basically
cut and paste, <a href="http://www.fromzerotoseo.com/scraping-google-hot-trends/">see here</a>.
Quick posts to brush on your PHP:</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US"><u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://php.about.com/od/advancedphp/ss/php_preg_3.htm">http://php.about.com/od/advancedphp/ss/php_preg_3.htm</a></span></u></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US"><u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php">http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php</a></span></u></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_if_else.asp">http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_if_else.asp</a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://www.tizag.com/phpT/postget.php">http://www.tizag.com/phpT/postget.php</a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US"><u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://php.net/manual/en/function.var-dump.php">http://php.net/manual/en/function.var-dump.php</a></span></u></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now let’s tap into Google APIs. Sign
up for your <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/base/signup.html">Google License Key</a>.
Read how to use the Google API <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/websearch/docs/#fonje">here</a>
and
<a href="http://www.phpkode.com/tips/item/php-tip-add-custom-google-search-results-to-your-site-with-php/">here</a>.
The <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/newssearch/v1/jsondevguide.html#json_snippets_php">Google News API is similar</a>.
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Next API were going to use is Twitter,
well technically 3 Twitter APIs. The first is to get trending topics,
<a href="http://ulyssesonline.com/2009/11/28/retrieve-the-latest-twitter-trends/">seehere</a>.
Next, twitter searches, similar to Google’s search API, but you
don’t need a key, <a href="http://www.intac.net/how-to-use-the-twitter-api/">see here</a>.
The third is a bit trickier, <a href="http://www.masnun.me/2010/04/30/setting-up-twitter-bots-with-oauth.html">see here for help</a>.
Basically download Abraham's TwitterOAuth library add it to your
project and go to <span lang="en-US"><u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://dev.twitter.com/apps">http://dev.twitter.com/apps</a></span></u></span>,
register your app and get your keys.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now before we jump in and start using
SQL, I feel it’s important that you keep in mind the scope of your
project. If you simply want to store a small amount of information
with no respect to order, you might consider plain text. There’s a
certain cost to setting up and maintaining a database and it may even
hurt performance if you are just doing a simple project.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
OK, ready? Start your server. Open up
MySQL Query Browser. Right click on a Schema, create a new one or use
a default, and create a new table. Now, let’s connect our new table
to our PHP, <a href="http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql/3">see here</a>.
We’ve been getting json objects for our searches, so let’s store
those in the database. For help <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php">see here</a>,
<a href="http://www.codingfriends.com/index.php/2010/02/09/blob-to-store-data-in-mysql-database/">here</a>,
and
<a href="http://jawaad.blogspot.com/2007/12/php-insert-blob-and-update-blob-mysql.html">here</a>.
I managed to get away with just using serialize() and
mysql_real_escape_string() but not addslashes().</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And there you have it. You are now the
proud creator of a web application.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-51084679812736892892012-04-15T13:23:00.000-07:002012-04-15T13:23:58.810-07:00Free Energy: E=MC^2<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’ve been interested with some of the
more exotic aspects of physics since watching NOVA’s The Elegant Universe.
It was mostly about the up and coming String Theory, but also covered
the history of the field. By the way, interesting thing about String
Theory, it proposes that there is a small chance that you can <a href="http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/03/radioactivity-sieverts-and-other-units.html">walkthrough a wall</a> due to quantum tunneling.
However, the probability is so small, the time it would take you to
try is longer than the projected life of the universe.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
E=MC^2 is probably one of the most
famous equations in the world. Everyone’s heard of it, but few
actually know what it means. Energy equals the product of mass and
the speed of light squared. Now the speed of light is a very big
number (299,792,458 m/s). So, this means any mass can be converted to
energy (a lot of energy!).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Sun_in_X-Ray.png/300px-Sun_in_X-Ray.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Sun_in_X-Ray.png/300px-Sun_in_X-Ray.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Nuclear reactions rely on this
principal to create energy. In a nuclear reaction that produces
energy, two atoms combine (fusion) or one atom splits (fission) and
at the end of the reaction the products weigh less than original
reactants. That lost weight is responsible for the sun’s energy and
the destructive power of an atomic bomb. That’s a lot of free
energy.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now, when I say free energy, I don’t
mean G, although some of the energy that is released is. I mean using
the dirt on the ground or particles of air to power our cities. But
we’re not there yet, and perhaps we never will be.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
You have probably heard of the second
law of thermodynamics. Basically it says that entropy can never
decrease. When energy is used to do work, some of it is lost as heat
and friction and can never be used again. There is an absolute limit
on the amount of work that can be done in the universe. One day, the
universe will be nothing but entropy with no organization. Rather
depressing isn’t it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/WMAP_2010.png/800px-WMAP_2010.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/WMAP_2010.png/800px-WMAP_2010.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I would like to leave you with a story:
<a href="http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html">The Last Question by Isaac Asimov</a>.
Perhaps a bit optimistic about the future of human race, but an
amusing tale nonetheless.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-63752351088340347532012-01-28T14:17:00.001-08:002012-01-28T14:17:40.392-08:00BlogamaniaGood news everyone! <a href="http://cdogma.tumblr.com/">I've imported my blog to tumblr</a>. I'm also making use of <a href="http://ifttt.com/">ifttt</a> so that every subsequent post I make <a href="http://cdogma.blogspot.com/">here</a>, Blogger, should show up there too. It should also post links on <a href="https://twitter.com/centraldogma1">twitter</a> and <a href="http://cdogma.wordpress.com/">Wordpress</a>. Ain't that just grand! <br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I've actually planning to do a massive toy project that incorporates ifttt and some other neat little things. Problem is, I just have to come up with what the project will be in what little spare time I have.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway, welcome to all the new viewers and I hope you get some enjoyment, and possibly information, out of my posts.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-47459026028279770382012-01-19T14:01:00.000-08:002012-01-19T14:01:05.824-08:00Open Source Software: Doom and Gloom<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A few years ago there was a rumor that the <a href="http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/">Linux Hater's Blog</a> was being abandoned. I took the opportunity to read through his old post. Most of his posts were filled with immature rants and filled with swears, but he had a genuine point at times. </div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Open source software may not cost you any money, but poorly designed software will cost you time and effort. I have seen more than my share of dropped projects; projects that start out with a small team that slowly erodes away until that last person leaves up a “Thanks for all the fish” post. </div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7r7LHXQCtqxCqtDb2iKxk5A4Q-mNApVL8Yut0-zZHK5atLWvvBeMY4fJakupBj06Gcp6GZ0r-c6Mc7NfSIil-otSHg0vo5HzQLtX83pkEmI1RkZ9u7HSA0avV2FXHJfa1rO6-gnl0BE/s1600/LIN80007-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio7r7LHXQCtqxCqtDb2iKxk5A4Q-mNApVL8Yut0-zZHK5atLWvvBeMY4fJakupBj06Gcp6GZ0r-c6Mc7NfSIil-otSHg0vo5HzQLtX83pkEmI1RkZ9u7HSA0avV2FXHJfa1rO6-gnl0BE/s1600/LIN80007-1.jpg" /></a>The greatest evil of OSS is probably fragmentation. The mantra of OSS source software has always been freedom of choice. And it’s good if you’re a consumer trying to pick a media player or web browser, but it is hell for software developers. Each distro has a different set of libraries and a different kernel and a different set of binaries. Your software might work on distro and not on another at any given time. That’s one of the reasons companies are so afraid to make software on linux, they have no clue what libraries they can support.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I recently found out about the Linux Standard Base, who are attempting to standardize binaries across distos. However, the LSB has failed, to a certain extent. The LSB doesn’t have the influence over the distros that they need. How many distos are going to listen to the LSB and use older binaries for compatibility when they can update to the latest and greatest?</div><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;">Check out what distros the LSB has certified:</div><div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div>Ubuntu: the latest release certified is 9.04, which is no longer supported. 8.04 (LTS) is also certified, but support ends next month. And having used an LTS this late in this life cycle, I can tell you, they are unusable.<br />
<div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;">Mandriva: the last desktop version certified is from 2006 (2007.0)!</div><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;">SUSE: version 11.0 is no longer supported.</div><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;">Debian: not certified at all.</div><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.07in; margin-bottom: 0in;">Fedora: not certified at all.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Mint: not certified at all.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Congratulations Linux Standard Base, you’ve managed to standardize a bunch of Linux distros no one is running!</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://zef.me/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/foghorn10272003-fig01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="http://zef.me/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/foghorn10272003-fig01.gif" width="320" /></a>But that’s not to say OSS is the only software affected by these issues. Let me illustrate it with an example. Before Microsoft released Vista it was codenamed Longhorn and it was a much grander undertaking than the released product. There were, what Microsoft called, the “3 pillars of longhorn”; 3 key technologies that would form the backbone of the finished Longhorn. One of these pillars was WinFS which called for all the files on a computer to be stored in a database. For those less technically minded, this was a big deal and allowed for some neat things to be done.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At the beginning, everything seemed to be going fine; Microsoft released multiple preview releases of Longhorn and, with the exception of the normal bugs, everything was moving along. Then nothing was released to the public for several months; no preview builds, no progress reports, nothing. One day, Microsoft announced that they would be releasing WinFS after Longhorn’s release and would be porting the other 2 pillars back to XP. The reason was, they simply bit off more they could chew, they kept on adding more and more features, they had to eventually crunch bugs and make a release. In the end it WinFS was further delayed and then outright canceled. </div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At the same time, linux had a similar open source program: Gnome Storage. Like WinFS, it planned to put every file on a computer into a database for organization purposes. What happened to it? Well, it was abandoned. It was done almost entirely by a college student, maybe he graduated, maybe he got a job, maybe he just was no longer interested in it anymore. The end result is Gnome Storage is in a perpetually unfinished state.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Two separate project failed for entirely different reasons.</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-25864538670520877732012-01-02T14:26:00.000-08:002012-01-02T14:26:11.186-08:00Banking: Money for NothingHappy new year everyone. I've been quite busy recently. So, excuses the large gap between posts. I meant to have this in my last post, but it was already such a meaty post I’ll just create a new post for it. It's not as timely as my last post. It certainly seems like the Occupy protests have wound down, which is a shame. There's rumors of <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/">something happening</a> in March, but we'll have to wait and see.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/bank.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/bank.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I’ve always had a bane for banks, specifically insurance banks. You pay every month in case something unfortunate happens, making the insurance company nice and rich without providing a single product or service. And when something actually does happen, you have to <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5257491">fight them tooth and nail get them to give you what they agreed</a>.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To understand banks, you must first understand money. A long time ago, paper money was simply a substitute for a real product: gold. You could take your $1 to the bank and receive $1 in gold. This was called the gold standard. But, our economy grew beyond the amount of available rare metal, so we switched to a fiat money. Money now has value because or government says it does, and we have faith in our government and the value of our currency.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The financial crisis of that started in 2007 seems like a complex issues, but it’s actually quite simple. Read a few articles, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/05/60minutes/main4502454.shtml">here</a> and <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/26/60minutes/main4546199.shtml">here</a>, and you begin to get the idea. Large investment banks invested sold loans to people who probably wouldn’t pay them back (sub-prime loans). And then sold “insurance” on these “investments”. When people stopped paying their loans, the investment banks were in trouble. Had these had been smaller banks it would have been no big problem. But these were huge international banks, they had insured and invested in many other companies. They were “to big to fail”. </div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Bear Sterns was lucky, they found a buyer. But Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. Some blame it on the government wanting the free market to take over, others blame Lehman Brothers for being uncooperative. And it sent ripples across the market. When later financial institutions when to the government and essentially held the market hostage for government money, they got what they wanted.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Years ago, this would not be possible. There were laws to prevent banks from becoming too large and taking stupid risks. They were implemented around the great depression to prevent what happened then from happening again. But, our representatives<a href="http://www.ehow.com/about_5413083_history-bank-deregulation.html"> repealed those laws</a>. I don’t know if it was greed or stupidity that led to that decision.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Let me explain, to the best of my abilities, how banks create money out of thin air. Most people believed that money is created at a mint and makes it’s way into everyday life by some form of government magic. But <a href="http://www.tradingstocks.net/html/banks_create_money.html">this is not how it happens for most money</a>. Most people know, when you deposit currency at a bank, that bank can loan out the majority of the money to generate income from interest in loans. As anyone can who’s watched It’s a Wonderful Life can tell you, this can get banks in a heap of trouble if everyone wants to withdraw their deposits. What most people don’t know is that banks can loan out <i>more</i> than you deposit (called a monetary base). Lets say you deposit $1 in a bank and the government has set a reserve rate of 1:9, the bank can now conjure $8 into existence and loan out $9!</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now remember how I said our money is fiat currency? How I said our money has value only because people believe in it? That is why preventing counterfeiters is so important, if we did not protect our money, it would become worthless. What would happen if the average person found out that the “money” on their credit card was conjured into exist out of thin air?</div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-65644524338946870772011-12-10T19:48:00.000-08:002012-04-29T12:25:38.363-07:00Corporations<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Where to start? There is so much I could say on the topic of corporations. People are always so scared of what the government does; believe it or not, the government is probably the least of your worries. The law tell you exactly what they are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_Act_of_1974">allowed to do</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, meanwhile corporations are a lot more free to <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Why-Was-Google-Collecting-Kids-Social-Security-Numbers-7078/">do what they want</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. I could talk about class warfare and wealth disparity. That’s the popular thing to talk about, but I don’t feel the need to repeat what you’ve already read. I’m here to tell you things you might not have heard. </span></div>
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<a href="http://infowars.net/pictures/news_files/Dec05/071205border.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="http://infowars.net/pictures/news_files/Dec05/071205border.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I would first like to start by talking about something that, on the surface, is wholly unrelated to corporations. Immigration reform in America. This is a hot button issue. Some people believe that support of stronger immigration reform is tantamount to racism. Not in my opinion. There are laws already in place making illegal immigration just that, illegal. Illegal immigration is disrespectful legal immigrants (they made the effort to immigrate legally), to the illegal immigrant (they are exploited for cheap labor) and America (lost tax revenue).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But why am I talking about it in this post? Arizona, known for it’s controversial immigration policy, was recently considering 5 bills to try to curb illegal immigration. But it did not pass. That’s not why it’s interesting though. It’s interesting because of the reason why it did not pass:<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/us/19immigration.html">60 businesses sign a letter asking them not to do so</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. Why would they refuse to tighter laws on immigration? Well they cite bad press for being Arizona located corporations, but how does that apply to Wells Fargo, Intel, or Cox Com.? The implication is that these corporations profit, directly or indirectly from illegal immigration, it wouldn’t be the first time a major corporation has been <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-02-08/news/28550637_1_chipotle-burrito-immigration-policy">caught doing such</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But even more disturbing is that even though <a href="http://www.inforum.com/event/image/id/275530/headline/Protesters%20rally%20against%20Arizona%20immigration%20law/">6,500 citizens could not prevent the turning of the first reforms in the state</a>, just 60 businesses could do so today. The reason for that is lobbying. Not many American know what it is. Basically, it’s legalized bribing. I know, I know, you were as swoon as I was when my grade school teacher recounted the tales of how the muckrakers exposed all of societies ills in the early 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> century and did away with corruption. But today bribing is as alive as ever was, there’s just a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States">few technicalities now</a>. In a 12 year period our public officials accepted $30,529,002,364 in bribes! And if bribes aren’t enough, <a href="http://www.bizmology.com/2011/05/12/former-fcc-commissioner-hired-as-comcast-lobbyist-in-controversial-hire/">they offer to hire them</a>! All of this is exacerbated by career politicians, being a statesmen is now a job and not volunteer work. We’ve created <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)">a buffer</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> between representatives and the people they represent. It’s not a bad idea, considering you don’t want every yokel in America to exert direct control over the entire nation, but politicians have forgotten who they're representing.</span></div>
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<a href="http://blog.registeredrep.com/copsandcrooks/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/TOo-Big-To-Fail-300x297.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blog.registeredrep.com/copsandcrooks/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/TOo-Big-To-Fail-300x297.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Too big to fail” has become a buzz word these days to describe some financial corporations. But I think is an apt phase for some of other corporations: super large, super connected companies who pose a systemic risk. Comcast, AT&T, too a lesser extent Disney, and Sony. These corporations dominate a market to the extent that every action they take has an effect on the market. They are able to dictate market conditions beyond what would occur in a competitive environment. And when these corporations are in trouble, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers#Impact_of_bankruptcy_filing">the effects are felt even outside their market</a>. When corporations are able hold our economy hostage for a government bailout, it is no longer a question of free market capitalism and instead a question of national security.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">CNBC sometimes runs biographies on companies. They’re not really journalistic, more of an hour long commercial for whatever company their doing. But for every one that I can remember seeing, there is always something awful that the company has done to get where they are. And they are not ashamed of it. One of the executives of Coke boasted how they made a killing in South Africa when other companies were boycotting the region at the behest of Archbishop Desmond Tutu because of apartheid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What do you expect though? Corporations aren’t people, but we treat them as equals under the law. The case of corporate personhood is rather complex and hits on some constitutional issues. First, some background. There’s no definitive corporate law. That is to say, there’s no international law on how these multinational organizations are treated. Most contain some form of idea of Ownership and Separate Legal Personality from that owner. Worst still is the fact that this is one of the few areas where the 10<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> Amendment is at play and the federal government has left states to create their own laws governing corporations. So, you get odd cases of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America_v._George_Hotz">a Delaware company suing a New Jersey man in a California court</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. Add to this that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_law_in_the_United_States#Corporate_personality">federal law is being applied to these corporations</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> and you end up with 50 different pegs being fitted to one hole.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, you also have to understand how different companies are structures. One of the core differences between an incorporated business and an unincorporated business is the concept of limited liability. Limited liability prevents owners of a company for being sued for the improprieties of their company. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let’s take an example: Mom and Pop form a partnership (a form of company that does not provided limited liability), Mom and Pop Company, and start a shop. A customer walks in and slips and falls due to a slippery floor. This customer sues Mom and Pop Company and wins, but Mom and Pop Company has not had a good year, it doesn’t have enough assets to pay the customer. However, because it is a partnership and it’s owners don’t have limited liability Mom and Pop personal accounts must pay the remainder. Now, let’s run this scenario again and assume Mom and Pop incorporated their company to form Mom and Pop Corp.. This time our customer can only sue Mom and Pop Corp. and not Mom and Pop individually. Assuming Mom and Pop Corp. hasn’t done well this year and can’t pay the judgment, there’s nothing our customer can do. Now that’s an extreme simplification, but this is a very important concept, Mom and Pop Corp. is a different legal entity from Mom and Pop. It has its own responsibilities and rights under the law.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, let’s put this all together. States create laws allowing the creation of corporations, distinct legal entities under that state’s laws. The federal government enacts national laws intended to protect a person’s legal rights. These federal laws are then applied to corporations because they are distinct legal entities. The end result is corporations with far more rights than anyone intended. I'm honestly surprised they haven't been given the right to vote.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But corporations aren’t like us. Corporations aren’t moral. They aren’t people. Regardless of the theory of stakeholder, corporations don’t have a vested interest in their community beyond profits. Look at the job situation. You’re a business and you’re in it to make a profit, so you want the best person for the job. So, you through up insane requirements like 2-3 years of experience for the exact same entry level job because you know it’s an employer’s market and a bunch of 401k’s just dried up so you can maybe get someone. And then you use come up with strange requirements like GPA, irrelevant courses, even SAT results because it might lead to better candidates. And because it’s an employer’s market you can ask for unreasonable things: unpaid training, substandard pay, and employer benefiting agreements. Or maybe you just have one of your employees do the job instead of hiring someone new, you save on hiring and training someone new in a tough economy. All the while you have a buildup of perfectly good, fresh graduates filling up unemployment.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.tropical-rainforest-animals.com/image-files/airpollution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="http://www.tropical-rainforest-animals.com/image-files/airpollution.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Corporations poison <a href="http://scorecard.goodguide.com/env-releases/land/">our land</a>, <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/science/environment/top-100-toxic-corporations.html">our air</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill">our water</a>, <a href="http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-food-recall-kashi-recalls-southwest-style-chicken-products-20110317,0,2328981.story">our food</a>, <a href="http://www.beckersasc.com/orthopedic-spine-driven-ascs/pfizer-recalls-pain-medication-embeda-due-to-formulation-problems.html">our medications</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, <a href="http://gorillasguides.com/2009/07/02/lawsuit-now-accuses-xe-contractors-of-murder-kidnapping/">our military</a> when it makes them a dollar. They are the greed manifest: “every man for himself”. And we look the other way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Because we get our high fructose corn syrup and our reality TV. We’re not poor, we get our stomachs filled and our promotions and we’re happy. That’s something that all those dictators in the Middle East forgot. So, you’re not likely to see a wholesale revolution or something like the end of Fight Club anytime soon. And I wouldn’t want to see one; life is pretty good compared to other times and places. So, what can we do?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the past we had regulation. And not just regulation that intended to foster R&D but instead created <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8136693/Drug-companies-exploit-legal-loophole.html">loopholes</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. We had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_busting)%20and%20still%20do(http://books.google.com/books?id=02AlUhwzaGEC">trust busting laws</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. We broke up Standard Oil once! <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opec">But no more</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. Now we make sure <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8537763.stm">Microsoft includes a ballot screen in Windows</a>. Blame it on globalization, I blame it on corporations learning who to bribe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Outsourcing is another devious thing corporations tend to do. Can’t get cheap labor to come to you, go to it. So counties that have laws that protect laborers lose jobs to countries that don’t. Right now, our tax code actually <a href="http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/08/03/job-wanted-jobs-ending-rigged-trade/">rewards corporations for doing so</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What about heavier import tax or, dare I say, embargos? It would certainly create a niche where that company used to be. Kind of artificial trust busting: when a corporation gets big enough, it outsources and can’t sell their goods in their original country anymore, opening up the market again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And on the topic of taxes, a flat tax is not unobtainable. Some simple calculations will tell you that based on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S.-income-taxes-out-of-total-taxes.JPG">total income taxes in 2008</a>, $1,091,473,000,000, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_outlays_in_recent_budget_submissions">2008 budget</a>, 2,900,000,000,000, that a flat tax of %8.76568 would yeild the same amount of income tax and that a flat tax of %23.29017 would cover the entire budget. Especially when you factor in removing all the loopholes from the current tax code, a flat tax becomes less absurd. Capital gains are treated differently than earned income in our current tax code, millions of tax dollars slipping passed. If the adjusted flat tax puts too much burden on lower income brackets, increase the minimum to compensate. It’s been kept artificially low through our tax system, and that’s not what a tax system is for. The role of a tax system is not to supplement low income or reduce wealth disparity; its role is simply to generate income for the government to operate.</span></div>
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Back to the topic of corporations, perhaps the solution to corporate greed is simpler than regulation. </div>
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<a href="http://english.alrroya.com/files/imagecache/detail_page/rbimages/1279610247256679100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://english.alrroya.com/files/imagecache/detail_page/rbimages/1279610247256679100.jpg" width="320" /></a>In the 1960s and 1970s a company called IBM had commanding control of the computer industry, which was at the time relegated to mainframes. There were other companies that manufactured mainframe, but IBM was so much larger than them that they were referred to as “Snow White” and the others as “the Seven Dwarves”. Everything was going swimmingly for IBM up until the 1980s. By this time IBM was bloated and slow, allowing technologies that they owned to be replaced by newer technologies and allowing their competitors to undercut their prices. When the PC revolution came, they lost their core business, mainframes. To this day, they have never regained the market control they once had.</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So, perhaps there is a chance that, if left to their own devices, corporations that grow too big will be consumed in a similar way, without posing the systematic risk of “too big to fail” corporations.</span></span></div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-65860538307007376312011-10-02T15:19:00.000-07:002011-10-02T15:19:43.653-07:00Minireviews 2: Electric Boogaloo<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Wow, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy, trying to find a job and all that. Things are looking positive on that front and hopefully soon I can change that title on my twitter profile. But I haven’t forgotten about the blog. I actually have some posts ready to go, they just need some polish and I’ll be putting them up for you to enjoy. Anyway, enough with the meta, let’s get on to the meat of this post.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I enjoyed doing my last reviews of anime, so I thought I would do another. These won’t be as flattering as the last though.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Neon Genesis Evangelion<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://trappedinjapan.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/neon_genesis_evangelion_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://trappedinjapan.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/neon_genesis_evangelion_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Status: Finished (Retellings being produced)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Plot: “At the age of 14 Shinji Ikari is summoned by his father to the city of Neo Tokyo-3 after several years of separation. There he unwillingly accepts the task of becoming the pilot of a giant robot by the name EVA01 and protect the world from the enigmatic invaders known as "angels." Even though he repeatedly questions why he has accepted this mission from his estranged and cold father, his doing so helps him to gradually accept himself. However, why exactly are the angels attacking and what are his father’s true intentions are yet to be unraveled.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Your initial impression of Evangelion may to classify it under “Action”. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong. It has it’s fair share of mechs fighting giant monsters. But, Evangelion is as much an anime about mechs as Moby-Dick is a book about a whale. It had mechs in it, but it is not a series about them. That becomes very clear by the end of the anime. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just looking at it as a mech alone, it's not terribly good. 17 battles in the entire series, most without any real action. Most of the sci-fi mysteries and questions were left unanswered in favor of a finale that revolved exclusively around the psychological state of the main characters. As a result, the plot is left unfinished in regard to the sci-fi aspects of Evangelion. Most of these plot holes are filled in by supplemental material: video games, pack-ins with DVDs, ect.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That’s not to say that it’s a bad story (psych student’s probably go wild over it). Personally, it left a bad taste in my mouth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Toaru Majutsu no Index<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Status: Halted(waiting for more source material)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Plot: “Toaru Majutsu no Index is set in Academy City, a technologically advanced Academic city located at western Tokyo which studies scientifically advanced superhuman students with powers, but is also set in a world where magic is also real. Tōma Kamijō is a student in Academy City whose right hand, the Imagine Breaker, has the ability to negate all magic and psychic powers, but also his own luck. One day he finds a young girl hanging on his balcony railing named Index. She is a nun from Necessarius, the secret magic branch of the Church of England, and her mind has been implanted with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum—103,000 forbidden magical books the Church has removed from circulation.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The plot seems to jump around a lot. 2 or 3 episodes will concentrate on one thing, and then in the next episode, something completely different. Although some of the plots are really intriguing at times, it robs the series of a centralized plot that seemed to be building in the first few episodes. Also, some of the design in the series is rather unoriginal: spiky haired protagonist, magicians, school uniforms, ect. This may have been the suber’s fault, the anime’s fault, the source material’s fault, or my own fault for not holding a degree in physics, but at times the language was a bit cumbersome. It felt like some conversations were just going right over my head.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, in the end, it’s a series with a lot of potential that could be really good if they just got a solid plot going. I’m interested enough to watch the second season when I get the time, but not enough to watch its spin-off Toaru Kagaku no Railgu.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ergo Proxy<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://fraunhofer.rtk.gen.tr/meta/11/6259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://fraunhofer.rtk.gen.tr/meta/11/6259.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Status: Finished<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Plot: “In a future where the world has been ravaged by a nuclear apocalyse, there exists salvation in a domed city named Romdo, where humans and their android servants, the AutoReiv, live in. Under the implementation of complete management control, it is a paradise where feelings are literally discarded, and the governing council dictates the way of life the citizens should live. But this utopian landscape is soon broken by a series of mystifying murders.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This one is a depressing anime. The setting and plot take a huge deviation from what the plot I posted says, but you’ll find that out if you watch it for a few episodes. The art is rather bland and “brown”, but that serves the mood of the series. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unfortunately, none of the characters are particularly dynamic. They all seem to be on a rather heavy dose of Ritalin. And the plot is rather odd. It has a good plot at points, and the writers created an intriguing backstory, but it feels like the writers decided to bury it for some reason. The backstory gets “explain” in one very odd episode and then never really brought up again. The ending was also kind of strange and left me utterly confused. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the end, it left me disappointed and wanting to know more.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-77490529501513417942011-05-30T15:39:00.000-07:002011-05-30T15:39:48.038-07:00My Favorite Programming Language<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Having spent some time on technical message boards, I've seen this topic pop up a lot. “What programming language should I learn?” “What language is the best for beginners?” “What’s better C#, C++, or Java?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.whitefang.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Programming-Languages.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.whitefang.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Programming-Languages.jpg" t8="true" width="319" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I was in high school, I was taught a stripped down version of C++ that avoided a lot of the Object Oriented concepts. When I went on to college, Java was emphasized in the intro courses and then C in high level courses. There were those courses that would force you to learn some eclectic language (x86 assembly, Scheme, Prolog). Outside of the mainstays, I’ve also run into C#, SQL, PHP, and HTML (which are not programming languages and, rather, scripting languages).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As far as what language you should learn first, in my opinion it really doesn't matter. As long as you go on and learn more about programming, your first language is going to affect you all that much. All programming languages have their pros and cons and one may solve a specific problem better than the other, but at the end of the day, it really won't matter which one you choose.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">C is much simpler than a higher level language like Java or C#, however it can be less forgiving than them as well. Java gives you nicer errors whereas C relies on the programmer to catch a lot of those dumber mistakes like running over the bounds of an array. Some of that can be solved using the right IDE (Visual Studio is very good in my opinion).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>C# and Java introduces Object Oriented concepts, which can be too complex for first time programmers and can add unnecessary bulk to smaller projects. I’ve also heard that Java’s garbage collection can be extremely cumbersome, as a CPU heavy task that pops up at random intervals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Nothing beats being taught in a formal course, but here are some learning resources I would recommend:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JFR6TAF4L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JFR6TAF4L._SL500_AA300_.jpg" t8="true" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Programming-C-Tim-Corica/dp/1879233916">A Guide to Programming in C++</a>. This is basically baby’s first programming book. It will hold your hand the entire way. We’ve all got to start somewhere and if you’ve never taken a formal class in programming this is the book I would recommend. The book is a little old, so, you’ll need to do a <a href="http://midoki.tripod.com/id1.html">few tricks</a> to get code to run on current versions of visual studio.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.horstmann.com/bigj2/javaconcepts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.horstmann.com/bigj2/javaconcepts.jpg" t8="true" width="260" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concepts-Compatible-Cay-Horstmann/dp/0470509473">Java Concepts</a> is a great Java introductory book. It will introduce you nicely to object oriented concepts. If you read some of the later chapters,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it will also touch on some of the higher level concepts in computer science.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://vig-fp.prenhall.com/bigcovers/013034074X.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://vig-fp.prenhall.com/bigcovers/013034074X.jpg" t8="true" width="259" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Next is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Randal-Bryant/dp/013034074X">Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective</a>. This is a very advanced book. I would almost say the material in “separates the boys from the men” in the programming world. After you’ve finished with intro books, consider picking this one up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/App_Themes/Default/Images/logo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="56" src="http://www.learnvisualstudio.net/App_Themes/Default/Images/logo.gif" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For C#, I recommend <span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Learn Visual Studio’s </span>Absolute Beginner's Series for Visual C# 2005 Express Edition. The entire series used to be available for free on MSDN, and you can still find <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/dd435692.aspx">some of it in existence on that site</a>.</span></div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-39618014999844989382011-05-24T17:50:00.000-07:002011-05-24T17:50:49.414-07:00Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was going to make a detailed post on the formation of kidneys (mostly to make the joke “Zac Efron the Nephron”) but I found the subject to dry and uninteresting. However photosynthesis and cellular respiration is a much more interesting subject in my opinion. In a way it is the basis of all life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Photosynthesis is the process by which plants (and certain other organisms) store solar energy in carbohydrate molecules: 6CO<sub>2</sub> + 6H<sub>2</sub>O + photons => C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>12</sub>O<sub>6</sub> + 6O<sub>2</sub>. This is how most new energy enters the food chain. This reaction takes place in the chloroplast. Photosynthesis is split into light dependent and light independent reactions.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/chloroplasts/images/chloroplastsfigure1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/chloroplasts/images/chloroplastsfigure1.jpg" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That internal structure is called the thylakoid. The light dependent reaction takes place right at the membrane of the thylakoid. Basically, this reaction takes sunlight and uses it to attach a phosphate to ADP to create ATP (the energy “currancy” of the cell) and hydrogen to NADP+. The molecules hold the energy in these bonds. For a summary of the light dependent reaction, see below.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Thylakoid_membrane.png/800px-Thylakoid_membrane.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Thylakoid_membrane.png/800px-Thylakoid_membrane.png" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The light independent reaction (aka the Calvin Cycle) occurs outside the thylakoid in the lumen of the chloroplast. It basically uses the ATP and NADPH created in the light dependent reaction to take CO<sub>2</sub> and create carbohydrates. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Calvin-cycle4.svg/654px-Calvin-cycle4.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="293" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Calvin-cycle4.svg/654px-Calvin-cycle4.svg.png" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cellular respiration is kind of the opposite of photosynthesis. Carbohydrates break down and release energy: C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>12</sub>O<sub>6</sub> + 6O<sub>2</sub> => 6CO<sub>2</sub> + 6H<sub>2</sub>O + energy. The main method of cellular respiration is aerobic respiration. A lot of biological reactions operate as a cascade of small reactions, and aerobic respiration is just such a reaction. See below for a summary:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://163.16.28.248/bio/activelearner/07/images/ch07c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://163.16.28.248/bio/activelearner/07/images/ch07c1.jpg" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Glycolysis is a 2 phase reaction takes glucose and creates 2 pyruvates.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://bioap.wikispaces.com/file/view/glycolysis.gif/187532339/glycolysis.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://bioap.wikispaces.com/file/view/glycolysis.gif/187532339/glycolysis.gif" t8="true" width="247" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The pyruvates are then converted to Acetyl coenzyme A.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://doctorgrasshopper.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/pyruvate-to-acyl-coa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://doctorgrasshopper.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/pyruvate-to-acyl-coa.jpg" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The citric acid cycle converts Acetyl coenzyme A to coenzyme A. This creates 2 ATP.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/chemistry/1/0/F/m/citricacidcycle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="http://0.tqn.com/d/chemistry/1/0/F/m/citricacidcycle.jpg" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Electron transport generates a whopping 32 to 34 ATP!</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFeYXn-NWg5-pg38OjcxmnHU4wsaxVzhcNnx_qqdVys3_KuA-v1iqVdssECSEWBq9fFCZUgA7o75pPzhF6dz-B7NlnvGMHOrnIIPsq9d9ADHXZ8NHGQRW8Y9jH-8JiOl3vdYgKZ6yvVfDx/s1600/electron_transport_chain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFeYXn-NWg5-pg38OjcxmnHU4wsaxVzhcNnx_qqdVys3_KuA-v1iqVdssECSEWBq9fFCZUgA7o75pPzhF6dz-B7NlnvGMHOrnIIPsq9d9ADHXZ8NHGQRW8Y9jH-8JiOl3vdYgKZ6yvVfDx/s320/electron_transport_chain.jpg" t8="true" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anaerobic respiration (fermentation) requires less oxygen, but releases less energy. Glycolysis runs and releases 2 ATP, but pyruvate is converted to lactic acid or alcohol depending on the organism instead of continuing on through respiration.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, you’re asking, what about all the other stuff we eat, how do we get energy from that. Well they enter at different parts of the pathway. See below.</span></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.aqualex.org/elearning/fish_feeding/english/bioenergetics/images/h13-new.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.aqualex.org/elearning/fish_feeding/english/bioenergetics/images/h13-new.gif" t8="true" width="257" /></a></div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-34408615153958847862011-05-13T13:14:00.000-07:002012-02-03T18:56:11.452-08:00Osama bin Laden: a Postmortem<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve stayed away from news posts, although I am still considering some news-round-up posts if I can find the time, and stuck mainly to content rich posts. This post will be no different, although the death of Osama bin Laden is news, there’s a lot going on in the Middle East, and I want to explore that. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I want to start out by saying I was not one of the ones out in the street cheering when Osama was killed. I just have something against celebrating the death of another person. I suppose it has to do with my belief that the world isn’t so black and white as to lump people into extremes. But, if you ask anyone who lost someone during the attacks or in the subsequent war that followed, they weren’t celebrating either. This was a time for reflection.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A lot of people like to cite the Muslim religion as the driving force behind Al Qaeda. That it was a clash of culture that led Osama on his path: “They hate us for our freedom”. While there was religious influence in the group, it was not the driving force. The Middle East is a region in which religion is all pervasive, with many operating theocrats. So, the real goal of Al Qaeda is political.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There is a huge disparity of wealth in many Arab countries; a small ruling elite controlling most of the wealth and resources, leaving the rest in poverty. It was easy for Al Qaeda to recruit terrorists when there were so many that are disenfranchised, poverty stricken. Many believed they had no future. It was easy for Al Qaeda to point their finger at ruling elite and the west, who had given their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak">blessing to many of these rulers</a>, and rally support against them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But, Al Qaeda’s motives were never the problem, it was their modus operandi. Drawing support against a dictator is a noble pursuit, and many in the international community would support it. But when you attack civilian and peace time military, that is inexcusable and will label you as a murderer. And you will have to face the consequences, as Osama bin Laden did.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But, Osama bin Laden’s death was largely ceremonial. Al Qaeda’s support in the Middle East had waned. And it was not just the military operation in the Middle East that had minimized their influence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><a href="http://dakiniland.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/more-christians-protecting-muslims-at-prayer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://dakiniland.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/more-christians-protecting-muslims-at-prayer.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In late 2010, a series of nonviolent protest swept across the Middle East. Known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Middle_East_and_North_Africa_protests">Arab Spring</a>, disenfranchised and impoverished citizens challenged the established dictators. In a few months, several countries had ousted their dictator and undergone revolution. People had found a way for change that didn’t require terrorism. Al Qaeda was left to watch as they became irrelevant.</span></div><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Many claim that Osama bin Laden’s death was a turning point in the “War on Terror”, but that point came month ago when people chose peace over violence.</span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-48683294691137737142011-05-07T14:08:00.000-07:002011-05-07T14:11:16.473-07:00Upgrades<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There’s some big news in the death of Osama bin Laden. I want to make a post on it, and we’ll see if I get around to it. It will be up if/ when it’s finished.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It may surprise you, dear reader, that being as technologically savvy as I am, I am probably one of the last people to upgrade my electronics. However, that is not to say that I do not plan upgrades, just that financial circumstances (read: unemployment) prevent me from making the final purchase.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let’s start with the big one: my PC. My current motherboard is <a href="http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=775Dual-vsta">this beast</a>, which I have had for the last 5 years. I envisioned it as a kind of transition PC, but here it is 5 years later, still pulling it’s weight. I would like to upgrade it to an AM3+ or Intel LGA2011 board when they get released. Hopefully it has SATA 6Gbit, USB 3.0, PCIe 3.0, and DDR4 out of box, but that’s kind of unlikely. Lightpeak (Thunderbolt?) looks to proprietary for my tastes.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dvhardware.net/news/2011/msi_big_bang_conqueror_tweaktown_ces.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" j8="true" src="http://www.dvhardware.net/news/2011/msi_big_bang_conqueror_tweaktown_ces.jpg" width="253" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I recently received a Blu-Ray burner, but my monitor isn’t HDCP, so I can’t actually watch Blu-Rays on my PC. So, I’m looking to pick up <a href="http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=320-1819">this guy</a> when the price drops to $280 <span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">or<a href="http://www.amazon.com/SX2210T-Touchscreen-Widescreen-Monitor-Built/dp/B003A5Y16Q"> this guy</a> if it goes on sale again </span>. I could even <a href="http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=55961&sid=7dafe194fa7c359a8a73d3ed8296cc20#p55961">modify it for 3D</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My device on the go is the iPhone 3G which, as you may have heard, Apple decided to unceremoniously <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2011/03/12/security-firm-warns-lack-of-ios-4-3-update-leaves-iphone-3g-vuln/">drop support for</a>. But I’m still considering buying an iPhone 5 or whatever iPhone happens to feature LTE. What can I say, Apple makes a damn fine mobile OS, up until the point when they make the next model. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My laptop is similar to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satellite-A135-S4527-Processor-SuperMulti/dp/B000OM953M">this bad boy</a>. I’m honestly surprised it still runs. I made upgrades to the hard drive and ram. But I no longer have the need for a laptop, so I won’t be upgrading. But if I did I would want something with a touch screen and discrete graphics card. <a href="http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&series_name=tm2t_series">This</a> is a little old or a nice ThinkPad.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Finally there’s my car. It’s almost 2 decades old. I’m not a car person. But as I previously posted, I’ve started watching Top Gear and I did a little research and would love to get the Chevy Volt when it’s price comes down.</span></div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-27054396250248205372011-04-21T15:19:00.000-07:002011-04-21T18:29:25.020-07:00Creating a DLL in Visual Studio<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">This was another subject neglected in my formal schooling. I picked it up through trial and error, but you won’t have to as I’m about to run through an example for you.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">In this example I’ll be using Visual Studio 2010 to create a dynamic link library out of a C file and use it in a managed C++ project.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">For the C DLL:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Create a Win32 Project. Application type: DLL. Empty Project. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Create your C file. I called mine retnum.c.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The text of my retnum.c is very simple:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">__declspec(dllexport) int retnum() </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">{ </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>return 5; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">}</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">__declspec(dllexport) </span>lets the compiler know we want to use this function in a DLL.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">For the C++ project.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Lets create a simple CLR Console Application project under the same solution as our C project.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Right click on your solution and go to properties, set startup project to be your C++ project. Also, go to project dependencies, on the “Project” dropdown menu select you C++ project and check off your C project.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Right click on your C++ project and go to properties. Go to Common Properties, Frameworks and References, click “add new reference”. Select your C project.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Create a header file under your C++ project. I called mine cdll.h.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The text of my cdll.h is:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">extern "C" </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">{ </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>retnum(); </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">}</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The <span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">extern "C"</span> lets our C++ program know we will be using C code.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The meat of my C++ project was in my app.cpp file. Condense as follows:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">#include "stdafx.h"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">#include <iostream></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">#include "cdll.h"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">using namespace System;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">using namespace std;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">int main(array<System::String ^> ^args)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">{</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>int i = retnum();</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Console::WriteLine(L"Your number is: "+i);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>cin.get();</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>return 0;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">}</span></div><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So, that’s how you create a C DLL and use it in a C++ project in Visual Studio.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif";"><a href="http://cdogma.herobo.com/">Project files now available on the download website</a>.</span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-68771299749853079562011-04-06T17:13:00.000-07:002011-04-06T17:35:31.423-07:00Why US TV Sucks?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’d like to start out this post with a little story. I used to watch CNN every morning to catch the news before heading off to the day’s business. One day I got up a little earlier than usual and caught the end CNN Worldwide broadcast rather than the usual CNN America broadcast. This day had been a particularly bad day in Iraq, a particularly important Golden Mosque had been bombed. CNN Worldwide was covering the attack, explaining the importance of the mosque and how the attacks would mean further setbacks to the piece process in the area.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then the broadcast switched to CNN America. They were covering the death of Anna Nicole Smith. For the fifth day in a row. No mention of Iraq or the bombing at the mosque. That was the last time I watched CNN.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I understand why they do it. They need to be entertaining because, while informative is their job description, entertaining pays the bills. Entertainment brings in viewers, those viewers show up on ratings, advertisers use those ratings to justify the price of their advertisements. But, do you know how the ratings system works? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The principle rating system in the US is done by Nielsen Media Research. Many people assume that whenever you watch a program, Nielsen (if people actually know their name) or some other company records this information, aggregates it, and then reports this information to the advertisers. People may believe this because it seems obvious with the extensive use of digital satellite or cable boxes. But I’ve seen people who believed that ratings could be collected over analog as well. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://www.thecampussocialite.com/wp-content/uploads/Reality_TV_Collage.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" r6="true" src="http://www.thecampussocialite.com/wp-content/uploads/Reality_TV_Collage.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">However, this is not how Neilson collects their ratings.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Neilson will call up, at random, households and ask if they would be interested in participating in their ratings service. These families receive a box and the demographic information for each family member is added to the box. In total 25,000 families are used in the study. There are 114,500,000 households in the US with TVs. That means that 0.03%, the 0.03% that picked up that call and agreed to be tracked, of US household have direct control over what shows stay and go on US TV. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And boy does that 0.03% love their cheesy sitcoms, crime dramas, and reality shows. And their love for those perticuar shows are the reason you see wresting on SyFy or the Jersey Shore on MTV or one of the other hundreds of networks become just another Spike TV. It’s called <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NetworkDecay">network decay</a>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I should mention, that some good came out of my ban on CNN, I began getting my news from BBC America. And because of that, I discovered Top Gear. Even though I’m not that into car, I love Top Gear. In a way it’s similar to Giant Bomb. You watch it for the chemistry, to see 3 guys hang out just hang out. You would watch it even if the show was about kitchenware.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I guess it’s a bit unfair to say only US TV sucks. Perhaps, other countries have bad TV. Perhaps, all TV is bad.</span></div>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6302692857803172506.post-31277627716871449792011-04-01T17:04:00.000-07:002011-04-01T17:04:42.669-07:00Download Site Ready<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Really short announcement. Been kind of busy this week, but I managed to get the download site up and running. Added the sample makefile I did a few days ago, haven’t tested it though. Will probably make the site a bit cleaner in the future.</span></div><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://cdogma.herobo.com/">Download site is located here.</a></span>Centraldogmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12120813440369369150noreply@blogger.com0