This week was my son’s turn to have his two daughters for the weekend. The weather forecast for Saturday (yesterday) was calling for lower than average temperatures and chances for rain. Early Friday evening we decided that it would be a good thing to go to the Science Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota and see King Tutankhamun (King Tut) exhibit. To complete the experience we decided to also watch the current movie at the Omnitheater, which is part of the museum. The Omnitheater was featuring “Mummies”, a 37 minutes documentary. When my wife checked at the Box Office to purchase the tickets, it became apparent that for the prices, it would make sense to become a member of the Science Museum. That way if during the next year we run into a cold / rainy / snowy day, we have an additional alternative.
Yesterday, around 02:00 PM we walked the dogs, packed the kids in the car and headed downtown St. Paul to spend an educational afternoon.
We arrived at the parking ramp around 02:30 PM. Got our packing ticket, which was $10 without a membership. Given that we became members we were scheduled to only pay $5 on our way out. This was just another enticement to become members of the Science Museum.
Parked the car. The ramp was quite busy. Made it to the main lobby. We had reservations for 03:00 PM to watch the 37-minutes feature presentation. After a short line we made it two thirds up the theater and towards the center. My granddaughters had been in this facility before so we followed their advice. After a few words by a volunteer / employee the movie started. Read the rest of this entry »
My grandparents, my parents and I have owned handguns. My two sons have at least one for personal protection. I am not affiliated to the NRA or to any three-letter agency. I just enjoy the control needed to put a bullet in the center of a target. A golfer who wishes to drop the ball in a hole could say the same.
A few weeks ago I stopped by a gun shop in Lakeville, MN (closest to home) to order a S&W M&P 15T rifle. I have not fired a rifle in the last forty years or so. I am looking forward for the weekend to stop by a handgun and rifle range in Burnsville, MN to take the new rifle for a spin.
Getting back to the day I ordered the rifle, I had to present my permit to purchase handguns. The attendant at the shop checked my permit and ID and ordered the rifle after I made a $500 deposit. The attendant had me sign the permit because I had forgotten to do so when I received it from the Apple Valley police department. The rifle would take about a week to be delivered. I had nothing else that I could do but wait.
The week goes by and I called the gun shop. My order had not arrived yet. I had to wait for an additional week. After the second week was over I called the shop. The rifle had arrived. I drove to Lakeville and the shop was closed. Apparently they close early on Wednesdays because during spring and summer due to the fact that the gun shop runs some kind of sports club. I had to go back the next day.
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A couple weeks ago during a non-technical conversation the subject slowly shifted to security and encryption. Given that we were quite casual on the subject I mentioned “The Code Book” by Simon Singh. If interested there are some comments about it on a separate blog entry. As a counter “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Cliff Stoll published by Pocket Books was mentioned and recommended. I wrote down the name on my notebook in order to look it up later that evening.
As usual, I like to check on the web for a synopsis and comments before making the buy-read decision. I fired up Internet Explorer and did a Google search. The book was not a novel, it was a recollection of events related to chasing some hackers / spies. NOVA’s 1990 (PBS) “The KGB, Computer & Me” is based on Cliff Stoll’s book. Given that I watch NOVA on our local PBS channel and I am quite interested in computers and security, I decided to order the book from Amazon. I am seldom in a hurry to get a book so as usual I just selected free shipping ;o) Read the rest of this entry »
The article “General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010” by Jake Tapper is worthwhile reading. It briefly lets people know that GE has not paid a single Dollar in Federal taxes for the year 2010. To top it all GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt is advising president Obama on business issues. What is wrong in the USA?
This article should make us Naïve Americans stop and think about what is going on with the economy in the USA and what can we expect for it to ever recover.
GE is not the only American company that manufactures (primarily in China) and sells goods and services outside the US and keeps part of their income as not taxable due to the fact that it is generated outside of the US. As a matter of fact it appears that most (if not all) Fortune 500 to Fortune 1,000 companies follow suit. Read the rest of this entry »
This blob entry refers to the article “Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications” by Juan Pablo Wachs, Mathias Kolsch, Helman Stern and Yael Edan published in 02/11 Vol. 54 No. 2 of the Communications of the ACM.
The article is very informative as far as its scope which as the title hints, covers vision when using hand gestures used by humans to communicate with computers. Computers using a set of one or more input devices and applying a set of algorithms are able to interpret, with high probability (around .96 or better) what the human is trying to gesture.
The article covers the following types of applications:
| Medical systems and assistive technologies. |
| Crisis management and disaster relief. |
| Entertainment. |
| Human-robot interaction. |
Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week Diane Sawyer interviewed Bill Gates on national television. It appears that Bill Gates is also in favor of firing most K-12 teachers and redoing the K-12 educational system in the USA.
It is interesting and perhaps understandable that Bill Gates is in favor of an educational reform in our country. As you probably know, Bill Gates is no longer at the helm of Microsoft. The baton since January 2000 in the hands of Steve Ballmer, but the issues that affect the USA sooner or later will (and have) affect Microsoft. By affecting Microsoft, its stock may plummet and most of the wealth of Mr. Gates might go up in smoke. Please note that hundreds of thousands Naïve Americans own some shares in Microsoft. The debacle of Microsoft will definitely affect a large number of Naïve Americans. Read the rest of this entry »
You are mostly aware of the issues / protests in Wisconsin. The situation appears to be quite clear. The union for the K-12 teachers / educators is revolting against the Republican governor in Wisconsin. A group of politicians (all Democrats) have fled the state to avoid voting on a proposed bill, which would eliminate pay raises to K-12 teachers. It appears that the governor wishes to eliminate the group bargaining process from the teachers union. This would apparently eliminate the teachers union in Wisconsin.
Before we take sides on the issue I would like to suggest you viewing the movie “Waiting for Superman” which was released last week on DVD. When the movie hit theaters a few months ago, for some unknown reason, the film was shown on very few theaters and for very short periods of time. Read the rest of this entry »
In the past few weeks I have been learning, discussing and looking for references regarding MD5 Rainbow tables.
It appears that they are a method used to reduce storage when attempting to get from an MD5 digest to the associated pass phrase. Of course given enough storage capacity and time it is possible (but not feasible) to pursue the brute force approach and store at least one pass phrase with every possible MD5 digest.
To give you an idea of the amount of storage needed, the range of MD5 digests is from zero (0) to 16 ^ 16 = 1.84 * 10 ^ 19 which is a rather large set to be stored in disk. One would have to create a large array associating every entry with at least one (1) pass phrase. Read the rest of this entry »
It is an average winter morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota (27 F at this time). Last evening around 09:30 PM my wife and I were watching the weather forecast on channel 9 Fox News. As usual the weather person attempts to fright viewers when there is a chance of snow. I am not a weather person but while studying for my private pilot license I have read some chapters and articles about weather. More relevant is the fact that I work with computer software and have a pretty good understanding how weather forecasts are produced. If you do not know, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has several forecasting programs than runs on super computers. Weather forecasters read the outputs of such programs for their regions, modify them based on TV station policies and present them to viewers. What varies from TV station to station is access to or ownership of weather radars that allow users to track within a relative short distance weather activity. Given that last night the weather approaching the Twin Cities area was out of range their eight (8) hour forecast was completely off. Earlier this morning when I was opening the garage door to take the dogs out, I was pleasantly surprised with the complete lack of snow 
)
Allow me to start with teachers. As we all know the governor of Wisconsin is in a pickle. His state, as well as all other states in the Union, is experiencing a windfall in revenues. Most are quite broke. Wisconsin has suggested to allow teachers in their state to just get their cost of living raise but the teachers union is up in arms. I ask Naïve Americans to stop for a few seconds (minutes are not required) and think about what is going on. As you might already know and probably do not wish to accept, the US is in the lower tier in K-12 education. The decay started in the 1950’s. This means that for at least the past two (2) generations of educators (30 years per generation) K-12 teachers have done a very poor job, yet the costs in education top what any other country ahead of the US is spending. We have a serious problem and the teachers and unions that are responsible DEMAND a pay increase!!! Dear fellow Naïve Americans we are living in La La Land. What should be done is ban all unions in the USA. Labor laws have superseded the need for unions and the problems they cause in our country. Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Professor Donald E. Knuth;
In the past few weeks I decided to read the entire set of “The Art of Computer Programming”. I started with Volume 1 and intend to read all the volumes. Perhaps when done I might consider applying for a job at Microsoft even though Bill Gates is no longer at the helm. It appears there are several fascicles for Volume 4 and Volume 1. Purchased all available books from Amazon.com and started the journey. Did not get too far. The first volume makes a reference to “Concrete Mathematics – A Foundation for Computer Science”. Could not resist the temptation of the reference, so pushed your book set on the stack and got a copy of CMath by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik.
Through the years I have used “The Art of Computer Programming” as a reference when designing, implementing and learning various algorithms. It appears to me that many programmers in the field just use on-line documentation to look up for a suitable method \ procedure and away they go, not fully understanding what is going on in the computer. In some cases the final product is bloated, slow and quite difficult to maintain. This appears to have a severe impact in the life cycle of software. Read the rest of this entry »
