Inkings of a geek.

Scrum is the word of the day. Scrum comes from the work scrimmage where a bunch of people are working together trying to get to the same goal. If one person goes off and creates a goal, that is not scrum. That is “look at me” type of attitude. Scrum comes from knowing what your teammates are capable of and using that knowledge as an advantage.

Stupid faith people are still justifing going on without learning.

Look here.

Watch out, I wrote this back in 1999 so...

N-Tier is not exactly new. It is a new name for something old. My professors have tried to beat this design philosophy into my brain without a name. Modularizing our code my professors called it. What n-tier does for us is provide a model that many people know and use. This benefits us so that we can talk to many people about one part of the model and they understand without having to describe that part of the model. All great and dandy so, what is it? N-tier breaks the design into 3 or more tiers. One tier for the data level, one tier for the business logic also, one tier for the presentation. Data, business and presentation we will refer to them as.

At the data level you have your database, file structure or anything that contains data. This level’s function is to provide access to data and the ability to change the data. Anything more would be uncivilized (Sorry, I had to say that). Okay, lets use a worldly example for this, time. Any clock anywhere could be used as the data provider. So all the clocks in the world would fit into the data tier. We can look at the data, check what time it is, and update the data i.e. change the time to fit our needs. Some people, I won’t mention, keep their watch 10 minutes fast. They have their own reasons for doing so. They have their own business logic for doing so.

Anything you do to data that doesn’t have a technical reason for doing so, is part of the business tier. Like that person who keeps his watch 10 minutes fast. It would be ideal, if everyone in the world kept the same time. But people can not cope with changing the day during daylight hours. At daybreak, it’s November 12th. Then sometime during the daylight hours we now say it is the 13th. I don’t know about you but I would not like that. So we split the world into 24 different time zones, since the day consists of 24 hours. But then we Alaskans can’t deal with 4 different times in one state. So we unify the time to the closest time in the lower 48. Not to mention daylight savings time, which Metlicatla doesn’t participate in. All these things are people reasons for changing the time. The time now is the same time as it is now in Australia, just different notions of hour and maybe day. We have a bunch of business rules for keeping time, nothing technical, just business. Now will always be now everywhere.

How do we know what now is? Well time of course. If you do not have a watch you ask someone. How do we know if it is the right time? We don’t know. We have to trust the people who built the atomic clock and trust all the calculations of the astronomers. I really don’t care if we are right or not. As long as everyone else thinks it is the same time, or can calculate their time from my time, I just don’t care. Actually I do care but no one else cares if I care or not. Anyway, say a blind person comes in the door and asks what the time is. I look at my watch and tell him the time. Five minutes later he asks again. This time I look at the wall clock and tell him the time. The blind person doesn’t know the difference. He can ask again in five minutes and I look at the clock on the computer and tell him. He doesn’t care as long as he gets the right time. Unless my time references are drastically different he doesn’t know the difference. The blind person can be viewed as the presentation layer. The layer in which we present and get requests for presentation of the data.

The blind person requests the time (presentation), I reference my watch (data), change the time for daylight savings and time zone (business) and give the time back to the blind person. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if the blind person had a braille watch so he could reference the time himself? The answer is yes. Then why would we want to go through the whole trouble of giving this person the time? Now the person has to keep the business logic of time for himself. If the daylight savings time comes into effect he has to maintain that data somewhere. Even though he can not see the daylight. Also if the watch breaks, he has to learn how to read and maintain the new watch or begin asking people again. This way he will always ask me, or someone else who knows how to answer his question, for the time.

Check this out. This person is building a linux cluster or 20 computers for the cost of about $200. That is cool.

Associating the word teen with violence is often made too much in our society. Recent incidents suggest this to be the norm for our nation. Our nation believes the teen generation must be controlled. I believe the teen generation must be celebrated and congratulated for living through these tough times. Our teens need this recognition in order to survive our world. The words teen and violence do not have to be said in the same sentence.

Throughout the news you hear teens associated with violence. Columbine was a big one. Teenagers just went on a rampage and killed many people. Just recently a group of boys in rural Alaska went on a rampage and shot and shot and shot. Every now and then you see or hear in the news that teens have committed crimes against humanity. What is wrong?

Our nation believes this is something we can control. Through the right prescription drugs and proper parenting we can control the teen generation. A recent government funded study proved that our teens can overcome depression with a drug called Prozac. Is prescribing drugs to troubled teens our best solution?

In the past our teens were celebrated. When our teens reached a certain age they were celebrated for reaching the apex into adulthood. No they were not adults but they were recognized for this feat. Great celebrations would honor these people who have gained so much. These people were congratulated and honored.

Now it is not so much of a celebration as it is a curse to the parents. Reaching teen years for a parent means more restrictions and more control over the child who reached teen years. Our people (in U.S.) are not considered adults until they reach 18 or 21. For me that was not so bad. I finally reached puberty and started growing when I was 17 years old. I knew my adulthood was coming. I can only imagine what a 13-15 year old must be thinking when they reach this critical point in their life.

All people have the need to prove them selves to society. All people need this assurance that their lives are worth living. Teens who reach the apex to adulthood need this assurance. We need to celebrate there coming to adulthood. Otherwise we force it upon them to prove that they worth the life they live. Unfortunately, this proving often times becomes violent.

We can stop teen violence. We need to celebrate their coming to adulthood. We can not control them but we can guide them through proper choices. Please remember that these teens will one day be our leaders.

This is funny. Sounds like something my co-worker would do.

Church

Church is the Bain of human’s existence. Church allows people to do unGODly things to other people in the name of the church. Think all through out human’s existence, there has been this church. There has been this ideal which we were supposed to adhere to. It was the church’s call what was acceptable. It was the church’s call what we thought. There was no church in Jesus’s mind when he was alive. He, Jesus, was thinking for us. Us, normal people that would live on this world.. He, Jesus, would not want warring factions and a stupid president. He, Jesus, would want peace. Knowing all that is around and all that is to become, he would want peace. Because, we as a world, are about to fight the worst battle for humanity. We need to come together and survive as one. That is all and that is all I will say for this moment.

My Brother

My brother was accused of raping a woman, who was of the dominant species (or so they thought), white and in college. He, my brother, was dragged through the media telling everyone that he was a rapist. He, again my brother, was threatened of his life in jail while he awaited DNA evidence that would free him. After DNA showed his innocence, he was let free.

I watched the news today and found out that some guy delayed my getting to work by an hour, because he stole a car and fled the police. There was no mention of his race. I find this weird, yet accepted, because of the world we live in. BTW he killed someone on his flee. BTW he killed a man. Killed man, was father or three children.

Race is an issue where I live and wherever I go. I accept that. No one should, especially my daughter. The little geek she is. She will go far because she is so much smarter than the people that she will deal with in her life.

There was no mention of race in the news casts that were aired after the big interruption. If there were a race issue, there would definitely be a race mention in the news that would point out that someone other than “white” committed a crime. I am sad.

Now look back to my brother. He is squeaking out a life back at home and living the good life.

Whatever happens we will always have fun…

Universe

I once came to the same conclusion as this guy once upon of time. Except that I had one other possibility.

This guy had the universe heading towards two possibilities. One, everything would get cold and reach absolute zero. He calls it the “Big Freeze”. Two, everything would grow hotter and denser until the pressure and temperature are unimaginable. He calls this the “Big Crunch”. I had a third thought up which was controlled chaos.

I will elaborate more on this later.

I just noticed SVG in firefox. This is totally cool!!!

Neural Network Design

Artificial neural networks are designed in many different ways. I think they are wrong and cannot be designed that way. After many years of studying neural networks that are actually designed right, we can possibly improve the design to achieve greater goals. The problem is studying a well formed neural network design. Designing the right one will take time and patience. In a few decades I believe we can build complex neural networks that are actually designed right.

Right now there are many neural network designs that can accomplish rudimentary pattern recognition. They are wrong. These neural network implementations are a product of human’s attempt at understanding and designing a neural network. These networks are very structured so that we can understand them. Unfortunately we can not understand simple neural networks such as a worm’s brain. Granted, that worm’s brain is a more complex neural network than any such that exists artificially today, it still is pretty rudimentary. We have to find a better way to study neural networks.

One step towards understanding neural networks, is studying neural networks that are designed right. By studying neural networks that are designed right we can then start to understand why these well formed designs are in fact well formed. From a well formed design we can manipulate and change the structure and record our results. When we get enough understanding of a neural network, we may be able to improve upon the design. But it takes that first step of acquiring a neural network we can manipulate and study.

Nature has provided us with many examples of well formed neural networks. From the smallest living microbe to human beings, well formed neural networks are abundant. The problem is we can’t really study these neural networks. We can manipulate these living neural networks and perceive the results. We just can’t see exactly how they are producing the results. Sure we can dissect brains and study electrical current inside these neural networks but we just can’t see exactly what is going on. These live well formed neural networks are not useful for us to try replicate, manipulate or study.

We can use Nature’s way of designing well formed neural networks. Nature has for billions of years been in design mode for neural networks. Nature will never get out of design mode for neural networks. Nature started with one celled microbes and slowly evolved to the sentient (at least as we perceive) beings we are today. Similarly we can design neural networks from the ground up. Starting with a simple neural network and “evolving” well formed neural networks. Our advantage is, we have the opportunity to study and manipulate the well formed neural networks at each step of the evolutionary process. This will be a long process with good results.

Genetic Algorithms

Genetic algorithms are a wonderful subject to study. I once wrote a simple genetic algorithm which is useful in understanding genetic algorithms. Incorporating genetic algorithms and neural nets is a way to create the well formed neural nets.

Genetic algorithms simulate Nature’s natural selection. Basically, you have a population of algorithms. Run through those algorithms. Select the best algorithms for your natural selections process. Replicate the good algorithms and replace the algorithms that didn’t do as well. Now you have a new population and run through the steps again. You can choose to replicate the algorithms requiring two algorithms or clone the existing ones. You can introduce mutation by changing the algorithms structure when replication occurs. The algorithms are fairly limited. Typically they are evolved to solve one problem. All in all it is a pretty good match for Nature’s natural selection process.

I once wrote a simple genetic algorithm. The algorithm’s main purpose (besides making me happy) was to cover a line. The algorithms had one hundred commands to run. The commands were limited to three separate functions; move down, move right and cover spot. I made 100 of such algorithms and that was my population. With each algorithm I drew a 10 pixel diagonal line and ran through the algorithm. I gave the algorithm one point for every spot they put on the screen that didn’t cover one of their own spots. I gave the algorithm 50 points if they covered a spot on that 10 pixel diagonal line. I initially had it giving 10 points but the algorithms would think that just putting a spot on the screen was good enough to live through the next round. After all the algorithms were ran I picked 50 that scored the highest and randomly selected a mate for each one thus creating 50 new algorithms. The new 50 algorithms replaced the 50 that didn’t score well. I tried introducing mutation but that didn’t appear to help the algorithms. After I got all the tuning (i.e. selecting different award points) I sat back and watched it run. It was kind of cool. Though, the algorithms never covered the line completely, the algorithms would evolve and try to cover the line.

Combining Neural Nets and Genetic Algorithms

Neural nets attempt to simulate the brain. Genetic algorithms evolve code into almost usable code. We combine the two and create Genetic Neural Nets.

Yep monkeys who learned how to use money, used it to buy sex...

Prostitute Monkey

death toll
Money that could have saved lives.
Poor people

I am sad.

OK this was too weird of e-mail thread to just pass up. (Programmers are weird)


Subject: [Hardhats-members] Too much MUMPS :-)

Okay, maybe it's not funny, given the real point of this sign, but when
I got on the bus this morning, thee was a sign right in front of me
saying

Stop the violence in East Oakland.

Now, what do you think when you see this? Is it

[Stop the violence] in East Oakland.

or

Stop [the violence [in East Oakland.]]

If it's the former, then you may have written too much MUMPS.

--- s n i p ---

A later e-mail...

--- end s n i p ---

Also consider

I saw a dog walking down the street.

Very few people would consider that ambiguous. If one meant something
analagous to what you wrote above they would problem write or say

I saw a dog as I was walking down the street.

What this shows is that sometimes the semantics are required to properly
interpret the syntax of a natual language statement.

- Show quoted text -

This is my atypical hello world post where I tell the world “Hello World” because that is normally what you do when you first write a program. But this is a blog sooo…

Programming, Outsourcing, History, Future

Ya think about those four words for a minute. Done? Read on…

Now that you’ve thought about it you are probably getting mad at the jobs we are sending over to India. Some big company, well call it A, is outsourcing a bunch of lines of code to be written by some Indian (from India) and not some American. This is bad right? Depends on how hard the task is and how much it affects your business. For example, if you wanted to create a website to sell your computers **coughdell** it would be OK if you wanted to outsource your website creation to India if you could control the look and feel and usability. On the other hand, if your company **coughm$google** depended on good smart (or dumb KISS) software, you might think about not outsourcing your code creation. Some outsourcing is good. Most outsourcing is bad.

Ok now that we’ve talked about the first two words, why is there a third word to think about? The answer is simple. All throughout history we’ve outsourced to someone who could make stuff cheaper and sometimes better. Take cars. Toyota has shown that they could make a better car for cheaper (import taxes prevent them from lowering price even further). I think it was last year that Toyota was the number one seller of cars in America. This is actually OK because, Toyota is building factories over here in America and guess who is going to be hired to build those cars? It hasn’t only been cars.

Now think about the fourth word. China has many, many poor people willing to work slave wages to have stuff. We buy an exorbitant amount of goods created in China. China, however, didn’t buy as much stuff from us. Result? We have more money going out of US than coming in. For the near future this is bad for the US and good for China. You think that we should stop buying stuff from China. For the global economy this is good. China’s middle class will stop being so poor one day and want expensive stuff (think Japan). We as Americans should be planning for China to buy that expensive stuff from us.

To end this; I am buying my next ball from Wallmart (big China importer), my next car is a Toyota, writing my own code that my company depends on, and outsourcing my next “Hello World” website with full specs.