alek blogs

Locomotives and Computers

Locomotives and Computers?

Perfect combination!

created Thu May 21, 2004 8:55 PM CST [2004/5/21 20:55 CST] permalink

Oh Laptop, Where Are You?

I have put together description of an ideal laptop and list of possible candidates. Still looking ....

created Tue August 26, 2003 11:15 AM EST [2003/8/26 11:15 EST] permalink

Checking validity of server public key with OpenSSH

It was not obvious how to compare key signature when you access new host (or one that was upgraded say from SSH2 to OpenSSH). Easy way to verify keys is to compare key signatures (this assumes you have trustful channel to get those signatures) still after login you can do some simple verification:

$ ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub
1024 bf:b2:5c:4a:84:be:23:29:0a:aa:33:18:8f:55:f3:34 foo@newschool.cs.indiana.edu

but wait (!) there is possibly more keys:

$ ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub
1024 08:27:15:2b:d0:6b:b4:a1:c9:c4:a2:89:c9:98:a7:3a /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub

$ ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
1024 b9:62:0d:a9:df:66:43:e4:97:3d:b8:a0:b2:63:52:8c /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub

still what bothers me: why there are three separate keys and not just two?

created Fri August 22, 2003 12:55 AM EST [2003/8/22 0:55 EST] permalink

Virus in air?

When you enter a room with your wireless windows laptop turned on, wireless card working, and with unfixed RPC vulnerability in your Windows NT/2000/XP then you may be "lucky" enough to catch a traditional virus and some of the latest Windows viruses ....

created Mon August 18, 2003 18:55 EST [2003/8/18 18:55 EST] permalink

Back to Components game?

From Don Box talk on Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) presented during XML Web Services One conference (based on article from eWeek):

"Objects are to services what ICs [integrated circuits] are to devices. And we're moving into this world where we want services to be replaceable, we want services to be deployed independently from other parts of the application, and there's a lot of work to be done in this space."

If you replaced services by components in the statement above would it not sound like something familiar?

Maybe the way to look on this is that Web Services becomes uber components: components that are not only distributed but work for internet scale applications.

created Fri August 15, 2003 11:55 PM EST [2003/8/15 23:55 EST] permalink

Memex: futuristic device?

If idea has almost sixty years and it is till interesting then there must be something in it. That is certainly true about memex.

First motivation for memex from "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush from July, 1945 (emphasize is mine):

(...) The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature. (...)

So how such device would work? One organizing theme is about machine remembering and recalling anything that operator deems interesting:

(...) When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item. Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails. (...)

Finally what really matters is ability to organize, recall and share knowledge and that idea what was well captured in this example:

(...) The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.
(...) And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail. (...)

It seems that linking creates such trial and good search engine is tool to recall trails and now blogs are making easier to create trials but still this is long way to go ...

There are other tools that try to do this but so far I have not found yet one that works for me ... where is my Memex? so i start forgetting what i can easily recall:

(...) Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important. (...)

created Sun July 20, 2003 7:08 PM EST [2003/7/20 19:8 EST] permalink

The Last Of the Great Indoorsmen?

Another species identified for extinction classifed and identified by Dave Johnson:

(...)This is all great and the only thing really causing any stress is the ProJSP book, but I don't think I'll have to miss a day at the beach to wrap up my changes to my two chapters. My Dad and I have our laptops setup in the kitchen and the only thing that really interferes with my works is the constant derision and calls of "hey nerd-boys" and "get a life" from our wives. This really doesn't bother me at all. I always arrange to bring a laptop along on vacation. I'm not like Raible. My idea of a vacation is tinkering with all things digital, which, coincidentally, is also my idea of work. I'm the last of the great indoorsmen.(...)

It can not be- I would consider myself another one - and I suspect there is more ...

created Tue July 15, 2003 6:25 PM EST [2003/7/15 18:25 EST] permalink

TRANSFORM-INTO-A-GEEK FORMULA

How to become a geek effectively? Sisi Liu has now a simple answer to question . No need even for the pill (and this pill was invented before Matrix was it?).

This works kind of opposite to ACME Nerd Suppressant [cached]

Now it doe snot work on men, does it?

created Tue July 15, 2003 4:25 PM EST [2003/7/15 16:25 EST] permalink

Time is the scarcest resource

Time is the scariest resource and it should be treated as the most important factor when considering any task. From interview with Jim Gray:

(...) You see this today. Two groups start; one group uses an easy-to-use system, and another uses a not-so-easy-to-use system. The first group gets done first, and the competition is over. The winners move forward and the other guys go home.

That situation is now happening in the Web services space. People who have better tools win.(...)

However it is also important to not simplify the problem we try to solve or we have something very easy-to-use but useless ...

He also talks about phenomenon of scale when doing software development and I find this estimate quite interesting:

David Patterson: What do you think is happening with databases in terms of open source? What is the Linux of databases?

Jim Gray: I think it's exciting. Very small teams built the early database systems. A small team at Oracle built the original Oracle, and there were small teams at Informix, Ingress, Sybase, and IBM.

Twenty-five people can do a pretty full-blown system, and ship it, and support it, and get manuals written, and test it. (...)

Now the trick is to be where action is and to be part of such team :-)

created Sat July 12, 2003 5:43 PM EST [2003/7/12 17:43 EST] permalink

Fire And Motion

So instead of writing code i read email and surf web not unlike Joel. He captured specifics and concerns about programmers productivity quite well in Fire And Motion.

However what really struck me was this piece of his experience:

(...) When I had a summer internship at Microsoft, a fellow intern told me he was actually only going into work from 12 to 5 every day. Five hours, minus lunch, and his team loved him because he still managed to get a lot more done than average. (...)

When I had a summer internship in France lots of years ago there was this guy who was apparently very good. He was very good but he did not show up to work however as he did exactly what they wanted at the end of the internship so they really loved him...

My personal theory is that surfing web, emailing or in general reading and thinking is what really matters for programming. Writing code is just an end result, an artifact produced to capture what was created in days of hard work of thinking that may have looked like doing nothing but were required to accumulate into written code.

created Fri July 11, 2003 6:12 PM EST [2003/7/11 18:12 EST] permalink

Resign Patterns: Real Design Patterns?

This is look on dark side of Design Patterns: Resign Patterns [local copy]:
Ailments of Unsuitable Project-Disoriented Software by Michael Duell.

Here is a short excerpt:

(...)
3.1 Chain of Possibilities

The Chain of Possibilities Pattern is evident in big, poorly
documented modules. Nobody is sure of the full extent of its
functionality, but the possibilities seem endless. Also known as
Non-Deterministic.

3.2 Commando

The Commando Pattern is used to get in and out quick, and get the job
done. This pattern can break any encapsulation to accomplish its
mission. It takes no prisoners.

3.3 Intersperser

The Intersperser Pattern scatters pieces of functionality throughout a
system, making a function impossible to test, modify, or understand.
(...)

created Mon July 7, 2003 5:12 PM EST [2003/7/7 17:12 EST] permalink

Google And Zen

Google regarded as a nature force that is unpredictable and requires very special attitude:

(...)Others have a more a Zen-like approach to doing well in Google. "You can't control Google," says a search engine marketer who goes by the name martinibuster on Webmaster World. "Anything you do to control Google, the more you try to manipulate it, the more it will backfire on you. It's counterintuitive, but it's when you let go -- when you don't try to control Google -- then your results get better."(...)

(...)For good reason, Google doesn't talk about its ranking algorithms; if folks knew what Google was doing, the search engine would be easy to trick. But in the absence of information from the company, rumors, theories and groundless speculation run free. On the Web, Google has taken on the aura of a god -- enigmatic, arbitrary, worthy of our fear and our love. Everyone's watching it for signs of anger and of embrace; we know that whatever it does will affect us profoundly, and so people watch it, and they worry.

read more at salon.com titled The Google backlash.

created Sat June 28, 2003 5:12 PM EST [2003/6/28 17:12 EST] permalink

Pyramids: returning magic to computing.

Finally magic of computing restored - nobody can doubt that computer requires special secret skills to run machine that looks like pyramid and glows blue in dark ....

created Sat June 28, 2003 3:31 PM EST [2003/6/28 15:31 EST] permalink

StoryBlog: tool to prototype merging blogs and story telling.

After even more emails exchanged with Jack Park (who is strong proponent of XML Topic Maps) we plan to get microBlog extended.

The aim is to explore some emerging ideas on how to use Topic Maps to facilitate merging multiple blog RSS feeds into stories.

So we call it StoryBlog. We start simply: first see what we can get by adding <dc:subject> as described in RSS To Topic Maps and go from there ...

UPDATE: StoryBlog project is now created on java.net and waiting approval.

created Fri June 27, 2003 7:10 PM EST [2003/6/27 19:10 EST] permalink

Echo Arrives?

As soon as Echo (aka Pie) is well defined microBlog will add support for it.

created Wed June 25, 2003 9:48 PM EST [2003/6/25 21:48 EST] permalink

Future so bright I need sunglasses?

Future so bright i need sunglasses? And it is not that summer is getting hotter but I feel that there are so many possibilities and paths to follow and so much to improve that it is so mind boggling that I need sunglasses to look into future ... as if nothing since 1998 changed :-)

created Tue June 24, 2003 3:48 PM EST [2003/6/24 15:48 EST] permalink

Is Semantic Web for Humans Or Machines?

After somewhat long discussion with Jack Park (and lot of emails exchanged) I have come to conclusion: semantic web will work if metadata/XML/documents are easy to parse by humans and can be transformed ot from that is easy to use by machine.

I would put easy to read by humans as high priority and machine parsing ability as second requirement.

This is simply what made the difference between RSS 0.9x/2.0 and RSS 1.0 ...

created Mon June 23, 2003 8:48 PM EST [2003/6/23 20:48 EST] permalink

How to do two way, p2p, symmetrical web using asymmetrical pull ...

In RSS: Promise and Peril Tim Bray talks about use of RSS providing notification mechanism to track state changes of Web services such as credit card transactions, weather, traffic reports, sales tracking, ...

This is very useful but what caught my attention is that by using RSS pull mechanism (or similar approaches that are asymmetrical) we may finally achieve p2p functionality (symmetry) that long time ago was promised with ubiquitous IP address (Internet enabled toaster anyone?). This makes sense for clients behind firewalls and other NATs i.e. majority of Internet users, clients that have no public IP address (asymmetrical web ?). Now the problem is really who will pay for it: how to stream commercials in RSS?

NOTE: this is how i designed event/message notification in XEvents/XMessages, to provide maximum flexibility it is based on pulling events matching filters, and application that is pulling may maintain token to allow to recover from disconnections (similar but more powerful than ETag).

created Fri 20 June 2003 7:18 PM EST [2003/6/20 19:18 EST] permalink

Note to myself: check your dream job before you start learning it ...

This looked pretty insightful to me (from How Vienna Escaped the Cubicle) :

(...)I had also spent some time shadowing doctors. I went to Stanford Hospital and followed doctors around on their shifts. For the most part, their work consisted of a lot of bureaucracy. The everyday life consisted of filling out forms, and then filling out other forms, and then dictating forms to other people.

I know that everybody probably gets disillusioned with their career at some point, but I got disillusioned with mine before it even started.(...)

created Wed 18 June 2003 5:10 PM EST [2003/6/18 17:10 EST] permalink

To live and die coding ...

Live to code .. code is poetry ... nice article/documentary The JBoss Group forks:

I realize there are two types of friends in this world. Normal friends and the ones you can code with.

So we see ,,,

created Thu 5 June 2003 3:40 EST [2003/6/5 3:40 EST] permalink

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