It's more of a Political "Crisis" than a Financial "Crisis";

As a consumer of mass media; at least I think I may be one I am wondering why our government is running around and simply doing nothing.

It's as if the political noise is drowning out the fundamentals. As far as I can tell two incidents have created the current debacle:

1. The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report stating that there will be a $17 Billion dollar deficit.

2. The Progressive Conservatives stated that they wanted to avoid Deficit Spending and remove the $1.95 Tax break on votes for other parties.

3. The other parties ganged up on the Conservatives with no real plan regarding either the deficit or the economy (I have yet to see any budget's regarding the aforementioned Infrastructure and other Spending).

One note about infrastructure spending; it takes over 2 years for any infrastructure projects to be approved (Candian red tape with Public Works) so If I am not mistaken only currently registered suppliers to the public sector will do well. I'd move some of my money into them if I wasn't so busy paying down my tuition fees.

The Princeton word net defines the term "Crisis" as follows:

• an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty; "they went bankrupt during the economic crisis"

Who exactly is in danger of going bankrupt here? Our banks are doing better than any other G7 country. No really they are;

Canadian Banks Best in the world


they complained about over regulation during the boom times and now the simple fact that they maintain above 7% capitalization is working in their favor.

Ed Broadbent went on record as stating the following:
(Harper's a Liar and Everyone else is doing it so we should too!)

CBC Story with Ed

Now the issue at hand is the fact that the coalition has essentially frozen any movement within our legislative assembly; IANAL but last time I checked we hadn't had to call in the Governor General into a real political fiasco in over a hundred years and the last time we did we ended up running them out of the country because they refused to observe the democratically elected prime-ministers legislative authority. This time it's because our government is just inept; incompetent or clueless; quite possibly all three.

According to a Recent article over at the National Post we are in a much better position to weather the slow down than our American counterparts:

Why we are immune!


So where the hell is this crisis that the Coalition is talking about? So the Auto and forestry sectors are not doing well; The Auto sector has no one to blame but the CAW; they consistently bleed their employers dry; to the point that they pay more for labor than raw materials; if we haven't spent so many years stating that we need to keep an economically un-viable part of our economy for so long well now it's another example of how government bailouts don't work.

As for the Forestry sector; when was the last time YOU read a newspaper? or didn't buy something that was not recycled? That and the slow down in housing means less demand for lumber and pulp.

So what I am wondering is where the hell is this crisis they are speaking of? All I've found so far is a report from the Parliamentary Budget officer stating that they will run a 17 Billion dollar deficit at current operational expenditures; which is normal when your economy goes into a recession; hell a recession is normal every 20 years; it's part of the cycle of capitalism. You cannot in any system ever sustain growth indefenatly without having periods of recession; it's just the reality of the markets;

Why is it we always return to Keynesian standards when the Lows of Mises, Friedman and Hayek come our way? We love the Chicago school for it's high's but when a downturn rears it's head we lose ours. So this is a Black Swan; and it's a different kind of downturn but really how can you estimate the amount of speculation in any market? I mean really? fundamentally there are quantitative and other methods but it's usually a very educated guess.

Warren Buffet once stated that "You need to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful". Now we get to see how much fear and greed run both our markets and our government.

Now the last time I checked the Bank of Canada existed to determine and mediate growth and inflation in our economy I think it's their mandate and pervue; since our banks are strong in the middle of a Global Recession and economic down turn; I'd figure we'd leave them to do their jobs since they are doing a pretty good one: Instead of letting our government lie to us about a non-existent crisis on the basis of what's going on around the world, and the fact that they were about to lose their hand out, I've asked the liberal party for an explanation and position regarding this matter we'll see how long it takes for an answer (if any).

Computer Structres is Done;

Well it's been a fun 8 weeks and I've posted some of my work here (that which I am allowed to post) as I feel it's of some educational merit with regard what I have learned. This will of course have me running down the P=NP rabbit hole. Now on to Computers and Networking ;P (should be easy enough as I've been dealing with computers and networks for over a decade).

Week 7 DQ 2:

Jill Bolte is a Neurophysiologist and she describes the human mind as a Bicameral Processor where the right hemisphere operates as a serial processor and the left hemisphere operates as a parallel one. In her book and lecture “My Stroke of insight” she articulates the experience of how a massive hemorrhage in her right hemisphere allowed her to experience what Buddhists refer to as enlightenment.(Bolte)i

The nature of consciousness is not completely understood; however the function of how the mind creates connections and thus “Programs” itself is well understood; Hillary Putnam in 1961 and Jerry Fodor’s in the 1960’s and 1970’s work on the computational theory of the mind articulates the brain as an information processing system. (Chalmers)ii

According to a number of sources the Human Brain weighs around 1.35KG and contains around 100 billion (100,000,000,000,000); Neurons (Elert)iii. Each neuron only has 1 axon but contains many dendrites connecting to the axons of other neurons; as stated within his site; the primary layout of the neural structure of nerve tissue in mammals is determined by genetics; however the nature by which neural tissue reorganizes itself is very different; given these basic constraints we may calculate the processing power of the human mind. However this is not without difficulty as we must simulate every molecule. (Debono)iv

IBM currently has a supercomputer to rival the power of the human mind; ASCI Purple and Blue-Gene/L meet the theoretical computational power of the human mind. (Henderson)v; however since Blue-Gene/L has never asked where it has come from we may assume that it is not self aware.

The two main issues with computers and mammalian physiology are that a computer chip is a finite state device; the human mind is not. The human mind with its 100 billion neurons has an infinite number of potential interconnections that are plastic in nature; it also contains an undisclosed amount of neruo-chemcials; each having it’s own nature of action and reaction.

“Neuroplasticity” is the brains ability to re-wire it’s connections according to function, it was discovered by Jerzy Konorski in 1948. (Konorski)vi The best example of neuroplasticity is the body’s ability to re-learn the use of a given limb or part after a stroke or injury to a specific area of the mind. Another facet of neuroplacticity is cognition.

The “Synaptic Self” outlines how our minds grow into the beings that we become as we age; this book on how the mind functions and grows states that the nature of organization of our neurons defines how we as beings exist and become self aware. (LeDoux)vii

Thinking Machines was a company that developed a system called the “Simputer” based on the doctoral work of W. Daniel Hillis and Sheryal Handeler during the 1980’s (it was founded in 1982). Thinking machines designed super computers entitled “Connection Machines” however the company was only briefly profitable before becoming bankrupt in 1994. The connection machines functioned according to models of the human mind and were excellent at various problems however due to a lack of funding a “Thinking machine” never came to be. Thinking machines pioneered work with “Hypercube’s” and laid the foundation for modern connectionless cluster based compute systems such as Blue Gene/L. (Taubes)viii

However two major differences need to be articulated to the problem of creating a self aware system modeled upon the human mind; Our mind uses not only connections but also chemistry and it comes somewhat pre-wired.

Therefore; if our mind were a computer then the software is our genetic code acting as source files with our objective or compiled binaries being the linked neural nets with their features equating to our neuro-chemcial interfaces and our since of “Being” would be a constant re-compilation of all code simultaneously all the time, whilst maintaining a fully functioning application and interface.

This dichotomy of state is the human condition; and it is also the reason very few concepts of cognition may be implemented by any given computer; such as strong A.I.; weak A.I., Machine Vision, Auto-pilots, et cetera; ad nosium.

If we were to create a computational system that had the equivalent of 100 billion chips each connected to each other in a dynamic net with audio and visual input and output processing that learned via feed back towards an objective of functioning with it’s surroundings whilst developing an ontological reference of it’s experience then perhaps we would have a system akin to HAL in 2001’s a space odyssey; however the technical challenges to this problem are gargantuan in proportion; the first of which would be memory.

Our memory utilizes the semi-understood hippocampus to encode long term memory into molecules; although this is a brash generalization our mind is indifferent to memory and actual experience; how then would we enable such a model in a computational system? (Holladay)ix

Would the system become self aware and if it were would we be able to communicate with it? If communication was one of the systems objectives and we gave it constraints based upon a reward based iterative learning mechanism with adequate models of interface and pattern recognition then yes it would communicate with us; however we would have to create a system flexible enough to understand the difference between noise, sound, speech, music and learn to “learn languages” first.


The potential is there and if we were to create such a system we could communicate with it; however we usually focus our efforts on creating massive systems that communicate with their own internal data; as such if a program ever became self aware would it even be aware of us? The blue mind project aims to do just this; create a truly strong A.I. that is aware and capable of full communication with us.

i Bolte, Jill (TED, February 2008) My Stroke of Insight [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
(Accessed on November 17th 2008)

ii Chalmers, David J. (University of Arizona, n.d.) A computational foundation for the study of Cognition [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://consc.net/papers/computation.html
(Accessed on November 17th 2008)

iii Elert, Glenn (Glenn Elert, n.d.) Number of Neurons in a Human Brain [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/AniciaNdabahaliye2.shtml
(Accessed on November 17th 2008)
iv Debono, Christian (Blue Brain Project, 2008) Blue Brain Project FAQ[Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18924.html
(Accessed on: November 17th 2008)

v Henderson, Mark (Times Online, November 19th 2002) IBM Starts work on a computer to rival the human Brain [Online] World Wide Web, Available from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article833106.ece
(Accessed on: November 17th 2008)

vi Konorski, Jerzy (Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, March 1949) Conditioned Reflexes and Neuron Organization[Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1643801
(Accessed on: November 17th 2008)

vii LeDoux, Jean (n.p., 2002 ) The Synaptic Self
viii Taubes, Gary (Inc.com, 1995) The rise and fall of thinking machines [Online] World Wide Web; Available from:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19950915/2622.html
(Accessed on: November 17th 2008)

ix Holladay, April (USA Today, March 12th 2007) How does human memory work? [Online] Available From:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2007-03-12-memory-first_N.htm
(Accessed on: November 17th 2008)

Week 6 Discussion Question 2

Chapter 9 Page 474 of Computer Science and Overview by J. Glenn Brookshear states that:

1. Should Law enforcement agencies be given access to o databases for the purpose of identifying individuals with criminal tendencies even though the individuals might have not committed a crime?

The question of ethics regarding the safety of the few versus the safety of the many is a complex one with a long and well publicized history. The recent increase in the powers of the “Department of Homeland Security” (Wagner)i; have created a fervor over the increase of these agencies prevue into our privacy and brought to question the American citizen’s civil liberties and rights to privacy.

The notion of a double standard where almost any government agency may utilize its mandate as a means to bypass the legal process of writ and warrant has become the basis for many articles both online and in print. (Doctorow)ii Organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are seeking to increase their own powers to pursue and utilize independent private databases as a means to persecute “suspected” persons in civil matters.(McCullugh)iii Up to this date they have included a 94 year old woman and a printer; sued for file sharing.

Law enforcement agencies have a role to play in society at large; that is to uphold the law and maintain peace and order within a civil society. However they like any other organization public or otherwise have to, by regulation and in some cases LAW; respect people’s privacy.

Within Ontario (as I am not an American) the legal regulations for the mentally ill do not require them to register publically; nor do local law enforcement agencies have the right to access public databases within Health Canada to see if a suspect has a mental disorder. Although this “Database of potential criminal’s” would be beneficial; the local Ontario government (as well as the federal Canadian government) value an individual’s privacy as a matter of policy; however in the light of recent global terrorist threats this attitude is changing.

Pierre Trudeau once stated that “The state has no business in the bedroom”; he was referring to gay marriage at the time; but he meant that federal policy and law has no reason to involve itself with religious bias and that religion and state should always be separate.

Benjamin Franklin once stated that “Those who give up Essential Liberty for Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”; at the time he and the founding fathers were engaged in a grass roots political revolution that eventually led to the first American civil war. By today’s standards they were by all means terrorists.

Let us for a moment consider the idea that if Ben was a political activist today; he would have been profiled by a number of institutions most notably the FBI and DHS; possibly brought in as an Enemy combatant and taken to Gitmo for further “Questioning” as his plans were to overthrow the current government by any means necessary; potentially involving water boarding and other questionable techniques.

The largest law suit regarding privacy in the united states at the moment is between the EFF and ACLU; they are suing Verzion, BellSouth and AT&T for illegally allowing the NSA to commit wiretaps on private phone lines on an as needed basis and without warrants; specifically for violations of privacy dating back to 1934; which was the same year the national phone system was implemented. (Bangeman)iv. This suit involves both the illegal monitoring of client data and the use of these institutions databases by said government agencies.

The ability to rule thought is a fascist’s dictators or oppressive regimes dream; part of implementing it is to profile your populace and then utilize propaganda to modify their opinions. Modern examples include China, North Korea, Iran and a few others. Propaganda is the reality of the modern world: The ongoing wars of ideas are as important to the development of society as water, air or shelter.

Law enforcement agencies are subject to the same errors as any other; where the potential for abuse exists it must be limited and mitigated accordingly.

Where the intent may be good but the outcome is often a violation of the individual’s rights.

Legal Agencies should not have unwarranted access to information; they should by law require warrants and writ’s subject to legal prevue prior to being granted access to anyone else’s data; corporate or otherwise; and the case requirements should be a lot thicker than “probable cause”.

The notion of being innocent until proven guilty is at the heart of criminal law; as such one should be proven before a judge to be a suspect of reasonable cause before a legal agency may access said suspects personal information: this process should be public and transparent however it is not; since legal utilities like the “Public Secret’s Act” in the United States and the “National Secrets Act” in Canada may allow these institutions to place restrictions on both Legal oversight and public transparency to any of these processes. Similar act’s exist in all G7 member nations.

We cannot as a “free society” deny the individual right to free thought; this includes political dissent in any non-violent form; as such allowing any agency anonymous access to a 3rd party individual’s information should be a grievous violation of both the law and public trust and should carry very stiff jail time for those involved; however in this modern time we often think of ethical considerations as an aftermath of the act deemed necessary for public safety.

Hyeak published “The road to Serfdom” in 1944 as a treatise on how the Nazis in Germany came to power and it often has an eerie familiarity with the laws regarding wiretap, the digital millennium copyright law (C-61 in Canada), and many others currently being instituted by government agencies under the idea of keeping the public safe. “I robot” is another good example of safety gone awry.

I for one maintain the hope that we the people see the forest from the trees.

i Wagner, Mitch (Information Week, August 4th 2008) Homeland Security: all your laptops are belong to us, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/08/homeland_securi_2.html
(Accessed on November 13th 2008)

ii Doctorow, Cory (Boing Boing, February 24th 2008) Government and corporate employees engage in an "epidemic" of snooping into databases [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/24/government-and-corpo.html
(Accessed on November 13th 2008)

iii McCullugh, Dean (Cnet News, September 11th 2005) RIAA, MPAA resume lobbying push to expand copyright law [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10039238-38.html
(Accessed on November 13th 2008)

iv Bangman, Eric (ArsTechnica, May 15th 2006) Wiretap update: big three telecoms sued while government invokes state secrets, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060515-6829.html
(Accessed on November 13th 2008)

Programming Language Generations

The well documented history of programming languages contains some that never existed which were then invented and aptly named as a result. Ada is one of those languages; although Ada Lovelace never saw a machine that Charles Babbage never built; she did write software for it that would in theory calculate Bernouli numbers, and has since been proven to work.(Baum)i Although Ada is a retronym (a term applied after the invention’s creation); there were many languages available and used before ADA, these include ALGOL, APT, FORTRAN and many others. (Piggot)ii

The logical history of software is available from the HOPL, a site devoted to the archival of all programming languages (Piggot)iii; although we could argue that the Jaquard Loom in the late eighteenth century (1890) was the first use of punch cards, and the first programming language to make use of recursion to produce fine rugs; the cards were actually pre-dated by switches when it comes to computers and programming.(Penn)iv

The reasons for abstracting programming language are very simple; machine language is impossible to think in; Humans usually think in the terms of the language they have been taught (New Scientist, 2004)v, not 1’s and 0’s. The amount of errors experienced by early computers during their first runs was incredible (cnet, 2008)vi; however a good portion of these errors were the result of a human whom does not understand how to program the machines memory, or mechanical issues; this paradigm has not changed much since the first days of computing, as we humans have not evolved much in the last 50 years; the languages used to program the raw data and computer hardware have.

Mechanical gears and vacuum tubes have given way to semiconductors; transistors, capacitors and resistors that are billionths of a human hair in size and consume a modicum of electricity whilst functioning. This almost three orders of magnitude increase in compute power has brought about its own issues; since there are no moving parts in a modern computer the potential for mechanical failure has been replaced by the potential for the failure in software: where the complexity arising from moving parts may be equated to lines of code.(Lew et al.)vii

The term debugging was invented at the U.S. Naval research centre at Harvard university when Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hooper noted issues with a program running on a Mark II computer; and then removed a moth from one of the relay’s coining the term debugging in the process.(Time, 1984)viii

The modern computer has a gargantuan amount of storage for both core memory and non-volatile memory when compared with the computers Grace Hooper used. To imagine how to program in machine language we would first have to consider our underlying systems architecture; this is as defined by the vendor of the system in question and is referred to as the Machine Language. (IBM, 1998)ix The most commonly sold personal computer today uses a machine language or instruction set architecture; referred to as x86 and x86-64; x86 has been around a long time; however as a language the 32 bit version has over 300 separate instructions for integer, floating point and other operations, combined with 32-bit width and register addresses and the terabytes for storage that 32-bits can address; the task quickly becomes impossible to program the system manually( Intel)x; although some circles still do (Wikipedia)xi; So programming languages arose as the result of machine language complexity.

Enter the “compiler”; software program to take and abstracted human readable programming language and turn it into machine useable code. The first compiler ever used was the NELIAC (HOPL)xii and it compiled ALGOL. It is assumed that the early compilers for Fortran, PASCAL and other languages were hand made that is designed to transform instructions by the hands of some very talented programmers; modern compilers are compiled by other compilers; That is a newer version of a compiler will utilize an older version of the same compiler to compile itself and once compiled may compile other software as needed; Examples include the GNU’s GCC compiler (GNU)xiii, or any commercially available compiler.

Programming paradigms have evolved in conjunction with the underlying technology accordingly; the current “Object-Oriented” paradigm evolved because we had developed computers that had enough resources to devote to a compiler to reduce the amount of time required to create software to run programs with our computers but sacrificing program effiencey. The previous common paradigm was a functional one for high level languages; such as ALGOL, FORTRAN or PL/1; the move to imperative programming languages was a logical transition from the functional paradigm since thinking in mathematical abstraction is more difficult than natural language; imperative languages like BASIC or SmallTalk were the result. The development of the Obejct-oriented paradigm is a result of using imperative object based programming languages, such as C and then once discovering their limitations in large programming environments developing C++ and the Object oriented standard to reduce programming time.

The measure of a computers overall efficiency is the time it takes the computer to do a given task; this is at the heart of benchmarking computer systems (University of Tennessee)xiv; however the time required to produce code is measured in man hours; (Anselmo et al.)xv, since the primary cost of developing software is the human developing it; the reduction of time spent by the programmer to create a program is money saved by the company making said software; and thus forms the basis of the Programming Language market, which is a large business.

Rapid Application Development and Extreme programming are methodologies that allow the development of application features and the reliability of said application to be of paramount importance in both its development and support; the current paradigm is shifting in favour of a methodology driven environments where project management methods determine controls for programming projects, and the underlying languages become less important. Current trends in programming include the move to interpretive, object-oriented, interactive & distributed programming languages such as Python, PHP, C# and .NET, although C/C++ and JAVA will be around for decades to come more a result of software market pressure than evolution: Where existing requirements stipulate that development time is minimal and the programs created serve a modular function such as Content Management Systems with native database functionality; we are also seeing trends in object oriented database access in addition to traditional variable storage methods; were applications are created with a database attached to them to improve performance and functionality. There is also the move online to standards such as AJAX(Opendirectory)xvi/SOAP (w3c)xvii where formal data interchange is supported by ubiquitous standards between unrelated third party organizations; the best example of this is Facebook, it’s programmed in PHP and uses AJAX and SOAP to allow third party companies to access people’s vital data. The social ramifications of this endeavor are still being rectified.

We have yet to produce a computer that can code it’s own programs; although LISP has many applications that can re-code their own functions and variables according goals and neural models(Luger)xviii we have yet to see an application that may produce programs itself as needed by objective alone; although many experiments have been completed, automating programming is one of the greatest challenges to the world of artificial intelligence, we can even purchase software that will aid in the modeling and selection & classification of unknowns but we cannot find applications that code themselves. (Ward Systems)xix

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i Baum, Joan (Archon Books, December 1986). The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron.
ii Pigot, Diramud (Murdoch University, 2006) HOPL: an interactive Roster of Programming Languages, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
iii Pigot, Diramud (Murdoch University, 2006) HOPL: an interactive Roster of Programming Languages, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
iv Penn University (n.d.) Online Eniac Museam [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~museum/3tech.html
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
v Biever, Celeste (August 19th 2004) Language May Shape Human Thought [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6303
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
vi Kanellos, Michael (Cnet, February 13th 2006) Eniac a computer is Born [Online] World Wide Web,
Available From:
http://news.cnet.com/ENIAC-A-computer-is-born/2009-1006_3-6037980.html
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
vii Lew, K.S. ; Dillon, T.S.; Foreward, K.E.(IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, November 1988 Vol 14, no. 11 P1645 – 1655) Software Complexity and it’s Impact on Software Reliability, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/32.9052
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
viii Taylor, Alexander (Time April 16th 1984) The wizard inside the machine [Online] World Wide Web,
Available From:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,954266,00.html
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
ix Super Computer Education & Resarch Centre Indian Institute of Science (IBM, n.d.) Online Glossary of Terms [Online] World Wide Web,
Available From:
http://www.serc.iisc.ernet.in/ComputingFacilities/systems/cluster/vac-7.0/html/glossary/czgm.htm
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xSmith, Zack (Smith, 2005) The Intel 8086/8088/80186/80286/80386/80486 Instruction Set. [Online] World Wide Web, Available from:
http://home.comcast.net/~fbui/intel.html
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xi Wikipedia (n.d) Demo (Computer Programming), [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intros#Intros
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xii Pigot, Diramud (Murdoch University, 2006) Navy Electronics Laboratory International ALGOL Complier [Online] World Wide Web Available From:
http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/showlanguage2.prx?exp=32
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xiii Free Software Foundation (July 31st 2008) The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://gcc.gnu.org/
(Accessed On October 20th 2008)
xiv Petitet, A; Whaley, R. C.; Dongarra, J. ; Cleary, A. (University of Tennesee, September 10 2008) HPL - A Portable Implementation of the High-Performance Linpack Benchmark for Distributed-Memory Computers, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/hpl/
(Accessed On October 20th 2008)
xv Anselmo, Donald; Ledgard, Henry (ACM Proceedings, November 2003) Measuring Productivity in the Software Industry, [Online] PDF Document, Available From:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=948383.948391
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xvi OpenDirectory (Netscape, 2007) Programming Lanaguages – AJAX ,[Online] World Wide Web
Available From:
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Languages/JavaScript/AJAX/
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xvii Box, Don; Ehenbuske, David; Kakivaya, Gopal; Layman, Andrew; Mendelshon, Noah; Nielson, Frystyk, Henrik; Thatte, Satish; Winer, Dave (W3C Note, May 2000) Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508/
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)
xviii Phd. Luger, George (Pearson, 2009) Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving, 6th Edition, [Online] PDF Document, Available From:
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~luger/ai-final/supplement-book-preface.pdf
(Accessed On October 20th 2008)
xix Ward Systems (Wardsystemsgroup, 2007) Advanced Neural Network and Genetic Algorithm Software Information Page [Online] World Wide Web Available From:
http://www.wardsystems.com/
(Accessed on October 20th 2008)

Unethical Governance.

Edmund Burke Stated ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’

To this effect, sadly Canada may elect a majority of conservatives for fear of tax changes.

Now let me state for the record to those few of you who may read this that I am well aware of the various scandals that have occurred in my lifetime on the hill, I am after all named after a senator. So the previous liberal cabinet had some issues with HRDC, it's no worse the Mulrouney's lobbying tactics and we should remember that his conservative government was fiscally irresponsible.

Let's pause for a moment and think about what drives this nation, it's not northern sovereignty, it's not catering to a plethora of minorities, it's not idiotic subsidies gained by union or natural resource development based lobbies. It's definitely not public health care or the public service commission these things all cost money. That's all just typical rent-seeking behavior from those with vested interests and a large enough income to change the advertising budget of the party that tows their interests.

It's the economy, by and large the wheel of business by which every dollar is made and any corporate dollar over and above 225,000 is taxed at a marginal rate of 38% to 43% depending on your province.

You don't need a degree in economics to know that the one thing any business needs is cash. Money buy's people, materials, time and space, it all costs something.

For me to hire anyone i know as a professional and to sell their services to anyone I have to take their salary and pay for them 25% more over and above their salary, it's called a loaded labor rate and it's what business pays to remain in business since without people you have nothing.

Now I am not a die-hard liberal, nor am I a die hard conservative, i prefer not to see the "left or right' paradigm as it's horribly flawed in it's analysis of good policy when it comes to government. I try to be pragmatic, i want as a citizen for my country to improve, for it's quality of life to become better for each and every individual, this means that their rights are protected; and they have the ability to become wealthy within their careers and that they may live knowing that their health is guaranteed and that they have an equal footing when it comes them and everyone else.

Let's fast forward to Harper's government; They introduced a number of bills that I disagree with; the Anti-Abortion bill dressed in an assault code (C-484), the bill clearly written by the American media lobby to attempt to restructure and criminalize anyone that would modify hardware or software that they own by law (C-61), a bill no one knows anything about that has been read in private (ACTRA) couple these three blatent blasphemes to democracy with Jim Flarity.

Jim Flarity is the current finance minister and he needs to resign, I'll state that it's a well known fact that he enacted a Trust tax after his conservative cabinet stated publicly that they would not touch Income trusts; his excuse for this tax was that there was "Tax Leakage" within the trusts.

Let's examine that last point for a moment, the previous Chretien cabinet created a vheclie for business that essentially had no marginal tax rate; this meant that large corporations would create holdings companies and then sell said holdings companies to trusts. What this did for the stock they held was improve investor confidence, so much so that pensions managers started investing in the pillars of the Canaidan free market economy; companies like BCE, Thomson, and any other major player on the TSX. This fostered foreign and domestic investment in Canadian owned corporations.

The whole notion of leakage is a falsehood and Jim knows it, he is just a greedy politician without a clue when it comes to finance or procurement. Harper thinks this man is the right man for the job, this is dead wrong as when he enacted the trust tax he devalued peoples retirement funds. In this country an RRSP is structured in such a way that it's a Tax deferral vehicle, not a tax evasion or aggressive tax planning one.

The moment that this tax came into effect we (our economy) was devalued, in less than three months the total market value of the various trusts decreased by around 30 billion.

So what Jim has done is take a little money now and lost a whole lot of money for a lot of people later, this crime has gone unnoticed, and it's a crime of fiscal irresponsibility, it has made certain that Canadian companies are now owned and operated by private equity or foreign interests.

Yet what does the average tax payer see, a 1% drop in the GST, combine that with the trust tax and you have a limited growth scenario that takes our economy and turns it on it's head. Realistically unless you are spending like mad that 1% isin't really going to fatten your wallet; and the trust tax well that took care of your retirement funds, to put it bluntly this man stole from our future. Even if you think for a moment that your CPP will cover your retirement with a 70% pension, how do you think your pension managers make that money for you when you retire; they invest in the economy, and pension managers in canada have very strict regulations when it comes to what they can and can not use as investment vehicles.

Combine this with the fact that neither the NDP, Green party or Conservatives have a plan; Jim is an old grit crony that gave his speech writer $125,000 without tendering his contract on Merx; in this country this is a crime, yet no charges have been laid and no one is accountable.

The liberals have a plan that has a surplus, yet i fear they will not have a majority, so our fuel taxes get increased! big freaking deal; stop driving your car every where and move walking distance to work and not only will you save money on insurance, fuel and other consumables, you'll get some exercise year round; time to think in the morning and under Dion's plan you'll even get a whopping tax break. This plan is income neutral, it shifts the burden of our tax base to the producers and retailers of gas based fuel. Personally I think it's a bit of genius, but where they got my vote is the removal of the trust tax, so when I decide to defer my retirement funds they are not hampered by poor and slowed growth because some grit decides with no evidence that there is "Trust Tax leakage" just so he can steal my money and give it to his friends.

It's called fiscal responsibility and all other points about our government; all other issues when compared with this prime are mute.

How to combat Evil?

Edmund Burke Stated ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’

To this effect, sadly Canada may elect a majority of conservatives for fear of tax changes.

Now let me state for the record to those few of you who may read this that I am well aware of the various scandals that have occurred in my lifetime on the hill, I am after all named after a senator.

Let's pause for a moment and think about what drives this nation, it's not northern sovereignty, it's not catering to a plethora of minorities, it's not idiotic subsidies gained by union or natural resource development based lobbies. That's all just typical rent-seeking behvior from those with vested interests and a large enough income to change the advertizing budget of the party that towes thier interests.

It's the economy, by and large the wheel of business by which every dollar is made and any corporate dollar over and above 225,000 is taxed at a marginal rate of 38% to 43%.

How to increase storage subsystem speed (without increasing disk rotation)

The primary reason that physical disks are around two orders of magnitude slower than the registers and cache of a central processing unit is the simple fact that one relies on physical motion, whilst the other utilizes waves of electrons operating at speeds close to the speed of light. The only limiting factor for the speed of a wave of electrons traveling through a semi-conductor is the material and its fabrication size this is often referred to as the fabrication “Process” used. In turn the process produces the physical limitations of the solid state circuitry.

The theoretical mathematical limitation is described by Taylor and Wheeler (1992)i to be 2L/c where L is the average distance to the memory and c is the maximum celerity.

The primary limiting factor within a central processing unit is propagation delay as well as the distance to the physical memory. Since the next limitation is the core oscillator that acts as the CPU’s clock we see that there are no moving components and the physical limitations of the medium being used impose a speed limit to the clock itself. When room temperature superconductors become a reality, then the only limitation to compute speed will be the mediums permittivity, and information will travel at the speed of light (C ).

When a computing machine accesses physical storage a section of the memory mapped to the devices controller is used as the interface; that interface in turn has to utilize the Hardware Abstraction Layer and Operating System (including all of it’s dependencies) to locate the appropriate driver which then utilizes the native commands to send and receive information from core memory to non-volatile storage via the storage device controller. One order of magnitude of latency is introduced when the core memory is utilized; the second order of magnitude of latency is between the controller and the storage device itself.(Developer Shed, 2004)ii The average core memory latency is measured in microseconds the average hard drive latency is measured in the milliseconds. (Storage Review, 2005)iii

Current methods utilized to increase storage seek, read & write performance are being implemented by utilizing serial buses versus parallel ones(Dorian Cougias, 2003)iv, employing techniques such as command queuing (Patrick Schmidt, 2004)v to offer a type of “branch prediction” to the drive itself and increasing local storage buffer size on the drive so less time is spent physically looking for bits, as well as utilizing multiple drives in a RAID configuration to aggregate available I/O bound bandwidth by utilizing specialized hardware or software, this also includes “Storage Area Networks” which in essence are local drives put somewhere else with gargantuan amounts of input & output bandwidth between the drives and computers that use them.

Performance increases to operational systems latency involves two kinds of improvements, the first family require no hardware modification and fall into the category of software optimizations, the second kind require hardware configuration and architectural changes.

Here’s a list of known Optimizations that will improve storage latency within the Intel PC architecture that I have gained from my personal experience:

1. Utilize a file system layout that puts the most frequently accessed files closest to the spindle

2. Utilize an optimized chunk size within said file system and its application, this is a delicate endeavor, some debate its validity, vendors such as Google use GFS that has file chunks that are 64MB in size; conversely the default NTFS chunk is 64KB; GFS is optimized for web crawling & reliability on commodity hardware. (Ghemawat et al, 2003)vi

3. Ensure that the drive has a dedicated bus; for parallel ATA systems this meant purchasing extra controller hardware, it’s a standard in serial ATA and serial SCSI storage controllers.

4. Optimize all controller driver software to the most current stable version available including the drives and the controller’s firmware.

5. Within the software driver offload as many storage calculations to dedicated systems hardware; these are usually part of the driver options or bios settings and may be implemented within either the system or the controller itself.

6. If multiple disks are available configure a RAID array; again depending on application, two drives connected in a raid 0 array may easily achieve twice the write and read performance; with half the reliability!

7. If a page file is used ensure it’s a static otherwise unless required remove the page file.

Now for architectural changes that would improve storage latency; to increase overall system performance and reduce the amount of primary latency involved the speed of the front side bus or the core memory bandwidth is the first place all systems vendors work to improve. Increasing the available core memory bus bandwidth and I/O latency improves storage latency as it’s the first caveat within systems architecture. Architectural changes are relatively expensive when compared with optimizations and usually take time to implement as the storage vendor consortium must adopt them as manufacturing standards; thus unless they are developed by that consortium or these optimizations are more cost effective than a current technology they will not usually get implemented in the public domain.

The second place to increase available Input output (I/O) bandwidth is the system drive’s bus itself. The current speed of Serial ATA is 300MBs/3Gbps this is achieved across a four pin serial interface, the next generation of serial ATA will be capable of 600MB/s or 6.0Gbps(Leroy Davis, 2008)vii, the increased bus speed will require that future drives have larger local buffer memories and better command queuing. So the next methods to increase drive performance without modifying disk’s rotational speed are as follows:

1. Increase aerial storage density and reduce platter diameter, utilize new magnetic substrates with higher potential well resolutions and smaller drive heads.

2. Increase the drive’s communications buffer size, preferably by orders of 2 (128MB, 256MB, 512MB…), thus reducing the amount of seek, read and write commands actually issued to the platter.

3. Increase the drive controller’s input/output bandwidth on both sides of the controller, eg: from the drive to the controller and from the controller to core memory via the driver and operating system; including increasing the controller’s bus clock rate.

Although this discussion question refers to physical disk storage, there is a trend emerging for non-volatile solid state storage based upon NAND flash technology; IBM also has an organic substrate that has shown promise with areal densities far higher than physical disks entitled the millipede.(Vettiger et al, 1999)viii although advanced concepts such as holographic storage, AFM storage and others have been around for a long time they are yet to be cost effective enough to be adopted as non-volatile storage solutions by industry.

i Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler (1992) Spacetime Physics, 2nd ed. United States: W.H. Freeman & Co

ii Jkbaseball, Developer Shed (2004-11-30) Effects of Memory Latency [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Memory/Effects-of-Memory-Latency/

(Accessed on Oct 1st 2008)

iii Charles M Kozierok, Storage Reivew (2005) The PC Guide – Latency [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/perf/spec/posLatency.html

(Accessed on Oct 1st 2008)

iv Dorian Cougias, Search Storage (2003) The advantages of Serial ATA over Parallel ATA [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid5_gci934874,00.html

(Accessed on Oct 1st 2008)

v Patrick Schmid, Toms Hardware (Nov 16 2004) Can Command Queuing Turbo Charge SATA Hard Drives? [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/command-queuing-turbo-charge-sata,922.html

(Accessed on Oct 1st 2008)

vi Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, Shun-Tak Leung, 19 ACM Symposium on Operating Principles (Lake George New York, 2003) The Google File System [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html

(Accessed on Oct 2nd 2008)

vii Leroy Davis, Interface Bus (Sep 17 2008) Serial ATA Bus Description [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Serial_ATA.html

(Accessed on Oct 1st 2008)

viii Vettiger et al, IBM Journal of Resarch and Development (1999),The millipede more than one thousand tips for the future of AFM data storage [Online] World Wide Web, Available from:

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/443/vettiger.html

(Accessed on Oct 2nd 2008)

Impact of increased storage space.

Yay, another week and another 3 assignments; here's my latest:

Since the invention of digital computing machines such as the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine,(University of Manchester, 2005)[i] , non-volatile storage has been a requirement as a result of the stored-program concept.(Brookshear et al, 2009, p.102)[ii] As outlined in sections 2.1 to 2.4 of the above text; Machine language in conjunction with computer systems architecture is what is used to accomplish work within any digital processing system; although the machine language, systems interface buses, volatile memory, ie; Random Access Memory (Ram), and non-volatile storage mechanisms may differ from system to system, the one requirement all computing machines maintain is non-volatile storage accessed via a controller. (Brookshear et al, 2009, p.123 – p.125)[iii]

The first paradigm of non-volatile storage utilized was paper tape followed by punch cards followed by cathode ray tubes and eventually magnetic tape, magnetic drums and our current paradigm of magnetic platters.(Computer History Museum, 2006)[iv]

Each shift within the non-volatile storage paradigm increased the amount of storage and thus increased the overall functionality of the available computing systems, since they could operate with faster Input and Output as well as being able to work with ever larger data-sets. The increase in size and flexibility was not without sacrifice, as the impermanence of the current magnetic systems as well as their reduced size has lead to many ethical concerns regarding data disposal and management, as news articles commonly include the loss and potential theft of information on modern hard drives.(BBC News, 2007)[v].

Generally the increase in available storage space has led to larger operating systems; more abstracted programming languages which require less programming time and faster overall systems operation, oddly enough Moore’s law also applies to storage as well as integrated circuitry.

The current shift in paradigm to NAND based flash memory is one of cost, speed, power consumption and size. Current hard disk systems utilize technologies such as Perpendicular Bit Recording (PBR), with Gigantic Magnetorisitive Heads (GMR) to achieve Arial densities up to tens of gigabytes-bytes per square centimeter. (Hitachi, 2007)[vi] a 1 terra byte (1,000,000,000 bytes) drive may be purchased for around one hundred U.S. Dollars, that’s one dollar per gigabyte . (Pricewatch, 2008)[vii]

IBM has stated that as GMR head size becomes reduced to the physical limit the only available method to increase storage is to increase the platter count when utilizing a mechanical drive; hence the reason they sold their storage manufacturing arm to Hitachi.(EETimes India, 2008)[viii]. The limitations of a physical system containing moving parts are that of latency, even though current drives may spin anywhere between 7200RPM and 15,000RPM the motor spinning the platters consumes a large amount of power when compared with the requirements of non-volatile “flash” memory. The main trade off with the current trend in non-volatile flash based NAND memory is that the areal density is lower, the reliability is the same and the cost per gigabyte is more than double that of standard hard disk drives.(ACSL, 2008)[ix]

Since storage has become a commoditized market the motivating factor behind the adoption of any new or existing technology is cost. The primary limitation of a computers use is a function of available computing power in conjunction with its available data set; increase the dataset and the breadth of function increases. This in turn translates into larger more functional applications and operating systems, although the cost of non-volatile flash memory is an order of magnitude higher for solid state systems and only offers a reasonable amount of storage for the same price in design when compared with the current standard of hard disk drives; flash memory’s benefits are lower power consumption, ruggedized systems operation and faster interface latency and throughput. Therefore the current reduction in price of non-volatile flash memory allows mobile applications with longer operational times for devices ranging from multi-media players such as the IPod to ultra thin and light portable computers such as the Mac Book Air. Ultimately this allows a systems designer to specify the storage type by operational environment and application cost sensitivity. Instead of fitting the application to the computer we now design the computer to meet the application.

The changes in data processing and storage interface require new faster bus technologies such as Serial ATA & Serial SCSI; as opposed to the previous parallel buses; these provide higher throughput and more complex controller systems with integrated optimizations like Native Command Queuing.

The architectural changes will allow future operating systems to be ten or more times larger than previous ones; this is due to the increased availability and decreased cost of storage space; which in turn this results in more options & applications for use by the end user. Once systems used to conduct data intensive tasks such as computer aided design, video editing, multi-media production as well as high definition media playback are now economically viable on an inexpensive desktop systems, laptop computers, inexpensive gaming platforms or even hand held devices.

The reduction in cost for storage has modified the way people watch and create movies; purchase and enjoy or produce music and the resulting increased complexity and cost of video games. Users generally use their personal computers to store vast amounts of information. Systems that were once limited to document production, web-browsing and the occasional video game now store entire libraries of Music and Movies. The increased reliance on this storage has brought about issues with personal privacy, and open international piracy of copyrighted works.

As the cost of storage continues to decrease it will allow us to modify the way we entertain ourselves and what kind of information we store; modifying our shopping habits and creating distributed computing environments like “folding @ home” which are theoretically the world’s most powerful supercomputer(Vijay Pand, 2008)[x]; this shift in paradigm has produced self published content often referred to as the Web 2.0(O’Reilly, 2005)[xi] were the data and information we have drives what and how we choose to consume . The increased risk of hardware failure has created larger impacts now it did twenty years ago, where as it once took a fire to destroy your music collection, home videos, books and articles of value including ancient software encoded on punch cards: Where as now the same destruction may be wrought by a single computer virus and an unwary end user.

[i] Manchester University (1998), 50th Anniversary of the Manchester Baby Computer [Online] World Wide Web, Available From http://www.computer50.org/ (Accessed September 30th 2008)

[ii] Glenn Brookshear (Pearson Addison Wesley, 2009) , Computer Science an Overview 10th ed. international. United Kingdom: Pearson Addison Wesley

[iii] Glenn Brookshear (Pearson Addison Wesley, 2009) , Computer Science an Overview 10th ed. international. United Kingdom: Pearson Addison Wesley

[iv] Computer History Museum (2006), Timeline of Computer History [Online] World Wide Web, Available From: http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=cmptr

(Accessed September 30th 2008)

[v] BBC News (2007), Millions of L-Driver Details lost [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7147715.stm (Accessed Sep 30th 2008)

[vi] Hitachi (2007), Hitachi achieves nanotechnology mile stone for quadrupling terabyte hard drive [Online] World Wide Web, Available From: http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/071015a.html (Accessed Sep 30th 2008)

[vii] Pricewatch (2008), 3.5 sata 1tb listings [Online] World Wide Web, Available From:

http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_1tb.htm (Accessed Sep 30th 2008)

[viii] EETimes India (2008), IBM, Qimoda, Macronix Plot storage tech roadmap [Online] World Wide Web, Available From: http://www.eetindia.co.in/ART_8800440589_1800009_NT_bd0e8ab4.HTM (Accessed September 30th 2008)

[ix] ACSL (2008), Flash Memory vs. HDD who will win?, [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.storagesearch.com/semico-art1.html (Accessed Sep 30th 2008)

[x] Vjay Pande and Stanford University (2008), Folding at home statistics page [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Stats (Accessed Sep 30th 2008)

[xi] Tim O’Reilly (2005), Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, [Online] World Wide Web, Available From: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html (Accessed Sep 30th 2005)

My job in 10 Years

So I recently have been accepted into a masters program for the University of Liverpool in Information Technology Security;

It's a "Taught Masters" that takes around 2 years to complete and costs as bout as much as the down payment on a house. Part of the "Asynchronous" learning methods are discussion questions. I much prefer the use of online message boards to do this as it allows one to articulate themselves and then be subject to peer review, with a program like this where students are from around the globe, so far the number of Canadians outnumbers everyone else at 2 out of 16 participants. However we have people from Albania, Nigeria, Germany, Saudi Arabia (Abu Dabi), and the UAE. The age range is around 20 somthing to 30 something, and the first couple modules are the typical "Welcome to our school and here's some information about comptuing science" cash grabs typical of any educational system.

One of my assignments is to awnser the question will my job exist in 10 years and if so what will be diffrent? and how would one train for this poisiton?

I'm posting my awnser here as it was some wirting that came to me at 2:00AM on a wednesday evening; thursday at work was very unproductive.

Dr. Ray Kurtzwell is to Dr. Gordon Moore as Einstein was to Maxwell. Moore’s Law stipulates that every eighteen months computing power doubles, Krutzwell’s addendum is that as the resulting reduction in computing power cost the application breadth widens, and foreseeable sector based trends emerge. We see this in our everyday lives as cell phones begin to replace laptops and laptops begin to replace workstations and as workstations begin to replace superscalar systems once reserved for military and government research facilities. We begin to see features once only thought of by Thinking Machines™, Cray™, SGI™, Sun™ applied to everyday tasks inexpensively. In conjunction with the increasing availability of the Web and the modification of it’s nature to a data driven archtechure will ensure this alone. Humanistic Intelligence will emerge within the next ten years as defined by Steve Mann in 1998, the fashionable accessory of technology is already occurring; this in conjunction with the integration of augmented reality into our daily lives as coined by Prof. Caudell will have major impacts on how and where we work. We may even see the oft quoted “Singularity” as defined by Verner vinge. Dr. Kurtszwell believes that we will integrate computerized systems into our bodies utilizing nanotechnology; Professor Kevin Warwick from the university of Reading has walked about with radar sensors sending information directly to his left median nerve already. The personal area network is a reality; ever increasing open access standards dictate that the available connectivity will increase according to Moore’s law as it applies to the transmission of information. Within the next decade how we interface with the web and the world at large will change; this shift in paradigm will include the ability to communicate in any language instantaneously, the ability to access any information instantaneously; the ability to synthesize the software of life is being developed by Dr. Craig Ventor at U.C. Berkley; the only limitation is available computing power. According to Alvin Toffler’s future shock the rate of change is increasing in a logarithmic fashion, Dr. Kurtzwell statistics back up his argument. So, what kind of training will be required for the information technology security and systems consultant specializing in systems design and architecture? I’d imagine they would have to be conditioned to be creative problem solvers and have a natural desire for self modification and early adoption as well as a thirst for knowledge: Which brings about my next prediction; as people become more connected they will become more exposed; as we integrate more and more of our lives with technology the need for security increases. The ethical considerations become major social issues. The methods used to design systems will be different, the abstraction of concepts will be required but we as controllers will guide computerized systems to administer and design themselves as well as other systems to meet our needs in ieterative fashion. We will manage knowledge instead of systems. As to the interface it will probably be hardwired to our bodies; we as the architects of change must ensure that human investment in technology will not be squandered, nor allow the fictional scenarios of George Orwell, William Gibson, Philip K. Dick or Masamune Shirow to become realities.

Thought's comments and feedback are welcome :D

Oh the Irony of an Exit.

Well since all writing is political in nature; here's a thought?

Why do we blame our administrations for actions that are beyond their control or the result of pure economics?

Should we follow Hyeak-Mises? Or Friedman?

The recent bailout of the American economy has had Bush lambasted by Ahmadinejad at a UN address. Yet the motives behind the $700 Billion bail out affect the foundations of the american economy. Bush's war on terrorisam is helping to bankrupt his countrymen, and for what cheap oil?

I personally believe that house prices are far too high, they have been so for a long time and I have it on good authority that I am right; people that make money with property are stating that it`s over inflated, around 20% or so, and these people are filthy rich. Housing is a highly localized market to various regions, and done on a national scale.

Realtors are trying to sell, (remember they get 2.5% of that high price from the bank) but the market is cooling off and with Ontario in a recession we`ll see it remaining flat for a while. When people purchase a home they are not using thier money but the banks. The banks than transfer that money via a morgtage to home owners, whom rent from said bank at 25 years or so at a given rate of interest that makes the bank quite a bit of money.

The problem is when the bank tries to re-sell that debt to private organizations, I could understand doing commerical asset backed paper (where the income was from commercial organizations) however the mess is a result of bad lending habbits.

As if you didn`t know already the crap in the United States is the result of a combination of bad morgtages and really bad accounting policies (mark to market anyone?).

What I find funny is that this meltdown happened in other places before; was Asia any diffrent in the late 90's? did thier money markets faulter?

And the irony of the situation is that we "The people" blame our governments for bad administration of our respective central banking systems. Yes the only thing your government can do is modify tax policy but that's it, economics is up to you and your behvior your spending patterns. So you lied about your job and bought a house and now you are defaulting on a price you can't afford because the fed screwed the intrest rate (they were asleep at the wheel) and you had a really bad mortgate at some astronomical rate? and it's Bushes Fault? Look in the right place first off and you'll note the man responsible for said mess is retired. (Allen Greenspan)

So back to my point, a recent CTV article lambastes Dalton McGuinty for losing 200,000 jobs in the auto sector in Ontario. The article mentions nothing of the Trust fund fiasco that hollowed a good 35 billion out of our economy; (they are called tax haven's for a reason people), and depreceated our assets in one foul swoop; or how I see no mention of either Bob White or Buzz Hargrove in the article regaring how they devalued GM to the point of bankruptcy over it's life by blackmailing labour rates to astronomincal prices, I`m sorry but you with your high school education do not deserve $65,000 per year to paint a car door or punch in bolts, jobs that can be done by robots. But since your father was an auto worker and you are an auto worker and Buz has banged the table howling "Contract Contract Contract"....now you have no job, how do you feel?

And that GM makes Trucks for everyone? the Auto Market is driven by sales that are financed by firms that charge intrest on loans given to people. If those people are not employed and the used car market saturates your competition and gas prices are crazy high do you really think they will buy a truck? This happened once before in the 70's but apperently no one remembers the oil crisis because the bought SUV's as soon as they could.

Labour will always move to where it is most cost effective; China and India ahve few if any envrionmental policies, they are where North America was in the 50's. Remember we used to put asbestos everywhere? Well they are putting melamine everywhere, diffrent goal's but ultimatley resulting in loss of human life. So eventually regulation rears it's ugly head; I'm remined of how the Comanding Heights series states that in low or bad times the Market get's reeled in by regulation according to the central planning model.

So again it comes to mind, the austrian school of thought is great for it's epic highs but no one like's the prospect of it's lows; then we switch to our centrally planned and over regulated model that we had before.

Yes I understand without these moves we would have serious issues, and I'm not stating that.

What I am saying is perhaps it's time for new models and plans since these ones have issues, so where to begin?

You know the liberals have a plan that has a surplus, I haven't seen anything from the conservatives in responce other than "Image buffing" and "vote buys" with promised spending, where's the writing? I want to be able to call you on your lies if I elect you to office.

And this whole "Getting tough on crime" reeks of american influence, if anyone ever knew or has known anything about crimnal defence law it's usually the case that the "Suspect" is mentally ill and has issues that would normally be covered by healthcare, so money spent on "Secureing" your land will result in a police state (department of homeland security anyone?) where as money spent on "Mental Health" and "Safe use sites" helps take the addicts and unstable and re-contribute a percentage of those a functional socioty. So what's it going to be? It's your vote and remember to use it wisely.

And the clock ticks one second closer to midnight.

I have come to the subtle realization recently that the clock is moving forward despite everyone's best intentions.

Why does the Christian right in the U.S. Love war? Why are Putin and Medvedev playing this very deadly game? The two scariest things in the world right now are the fact that a full 1/3 of the American population believe a myth.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-untruth epically when that lie is used to control your sex life and tell you that you will never be good enough. We deserve better than that kind of insecurity. The tenants of all faiths have the golden rule in some shape or form.

I cannot but help be reminded after watching Jesus Camp that indoctrination happens everywhere all the time, as a matter of fact. In western societies we often forget to indoctrinate our kids with the best of ourselves, i mean I figure that's the goal of having kids in the first place right?

Yet right below us in the bible belt there are people teaching right wing evangelists that it's ok to kill for god. I have tons of issues with that; for starters it's a hypocracy.

I've said it many times; the central hypocracy of the christian faith is that if you talk to god it's called prayer, if god talks to you it's called schitzophrenia.

Our legal system is designed to have mercy on the mentally ill as we cannot understand what it's like to be told by a deity to kill somone; thus we have Jail and Mental Institutions.

Islam was once great, the highest achievement of Islam in the old middle east was the translataion of Greek and Roman works into the Vernacular (Saxxon, Norman...) This was done becasue these cities had massive libraries; like byzantium and constantinople.

The interesteing side effect of this was the renicence; where church and state began to seperate and people began to really think for themselfs. The age of reason rozenkrantz called it but again I'm pretty sure god spoke to him.

At one point we wared over religion, now it's over raw resources; religious diffrences simply make it ok.

We are hypocrites, we critisize the russians for pissing on georgia for rights to build pipelines to europe so they can bully the europeans some more. Yet we say nothing to the american take over of Iraq. WMD's or none Hussien was between a rock and a hard place; stating he had none but making the world think he had some to prevent the Iranians from invading; or the kurds from rioting & looting.

On to my next question, the war of Ideology. We exist in a world polarized by confilict; it's one of the most peaceful times in human history. Africa is still in turmoil with no forseeable end; we have the U.K. with BP in nigeria; China in Rawanda for the exact same reason, human rights violations all over the globe and for what?

Russian ideoligy has changed; it was and now isin't pro west let's get paid, since they've gotten paid we demonize them for helping the really poor parts of break away states; Now that they have economic power they are a worrysome foe for all the break away states that have little to no economic stability.

Chinese ideology is the epitome of a fascist capitolist nation with the paradigm of socialisam, they don't care about thier neibours so much but they do care about natural resources.

The americans? well we all know that they care about oil more than human rights, but the judeo christian war on Islam is just getting started, and with 100 million christians trained not to question authority this is a scary place to be.

So who's going to wake up and tell these people that they can make these consumeables at less than cost? Oil can be made with sunlight and life; phytoplankton and algae specifically strains of Bracthaterius Brauni; I mean I love T Boons Pickens; however I plan to help make his investments obsolete, they are a good interim solution, but not a complete one.

The middle powers on this globe are pro west and most of them are NATO members. What scares me is the russian forign policy of pre-emptive attacks that may include nuclear weapons on forign states that don't fall in line.

I once heard a Lecture by a forign minister under Gorbechev; Sergey Zaitsev, he stated: Canada is lucky as they have only one neibour and you both get along, Russia has 24 and they hate eachother.

So These break away states are becomming pro west and pro nato out of self preservation more than anything else. As NATO member states if russia tries to help them with any bandits or peace keeping missions they risk global conflict. If Poland, the Ukraine Georga and others become NATO members will nato be able to meet an all out industrialized war with russia?

The clock has ticked one second closer to midnight and have we even noticed? A man once stated he had the ultimate soltuion. Look where that got us? Now the ideological debate is over, it's been 50 odd years of cold war and the Impearial historic views of russia have changed yet the current administration wishes to re-kindle that era; or somthing akin to it.

The problem as Ronald Wright framed it is that we have developed fire powerful enough kill us all. Oppenhimers brainchild threatens us all so now what?

The only awnser is self sufficency on a national scale. Canada is right next to russia, we have two neibours and they aren't getting along, and we don't have the forces to defend ourselfs, espically against a reborn superpower.

So what now?

Hazzah!

Oh my dear; I've found it a Cheap windmill. Oddly enough there's a lot of irony to be had by purchasing "Green" technology made in China, due to the complete lack of environmental regulation chances are whatever windmill or solar cell you may be considering to purchase was probably made there. Don't believe me? I dare you not to believe me.



So me being the semi-anarchistic down with the man with his hands in my pockets kind of guy would like to build my home out of recycled shipping containers. That means i have to find a local source for these things; the closest major port to my home town is Montreal and I can get 40 ft High-Cubes sent over for around 3000 each used. That's around 350 sq feet of living space ($8.50 / sq foot) with an unfinished 9'6" ceiling. So I could buy 4 and lay a foundation for them and then get a whole bunch of industrial building materials including crazy insulation; more on those here:



Container Bay



Now it's called sustainable living, since I cannot find a tire dump anywhere near by; Automobile tires must be recycled by law! Dumps will actually give you money to take them away and once filled with around 16KG of dirt each they tend to make very good walls after a light coating of concrete, not to mention in glass and mass designs you end up with a 3' thermal mass, in terms of solar heating that's about a weeks worth of heat. But I digress this posting is about the irony of Chinese wind mills being sold to Americans under an American branding. Obviously you lay the filled tires like interlocking brick.



Here's the Raw Jiggy:



Water Treatment, power distribution, heat generation all in one place, brilliant idea and the company is in Mississauga:

Eco Nomad



Now it's all nice and good to have a home with in floor radiant heat with bamboo flooring and Italian and German kitchens and baths and lot's of large solar windows with furniture that was made in an environmentally friendly manner however without power what good is it?



We forget that most things in this country are made in China even if they are branded here. Here's the excellent example:



Bergey Wind Power is probably one of the most if not the most successful supplier of 5Kw and 10Kw windmills. The windmill by itself from them directly (the 10Kw is actually a 7.5Kw) is around 10K; that's roughly $1.33 per Kw, not including the requierd Tower to mount the thing you'll want at least 18M to 20M so another $5K to $10K there. So a 10Kw windmill made in the USA for 20K all told puts the cost of that KW of production even higher.



Bergey Wind Power



Now, enter China Best; they are a portal with lots of good engrish! I love engrish; it makes me laugh.

China best Wind Power

Now they sell a 20Kw windmill with an 18M STEEL MONOPOLE TOWER for around a $1 / KW. I'm in sheer amazement, I'm assuming slave labor, the killing of small tracts of land via coal based steel production somewhere in mainland china and the raping and pillaging of some other small African country is involved (re Darfour) in the completely low low price. Or maybe they just have really really really cheap labor. Note the 5Kw looks a lot like the Bergey.



As for Batteries and control:

Outback Power is the world leader in the design and sales of Charger / Inverter / Controllers. These systems allow you to take your windmill and or solar panels and connect them to a battery bank since it's not always windy or sunny.

Outbackpower



As for batteries when dealing with backup power deep cycle lead acid gel packed batteries are what are required. The technology was originally developed for Diesel electric submarines during WWII, then utilized by the Telecommunication industry as a means to maintain ring voltages on lines only recently removed the legacy of which is a -48V power standard.

Again China to the rescue:

BSB Power's GEL Plus2-2000

This thing is a 2V 2000Ah battery with a service life of 15 years. At $500 each one could build a 2000Ah battery bank for 12K + shipping. Hell they even sent me wiring diagrams.



So all told freedom from the grid may be had for around 45K, since I'm hoping to save that much or more on building materials my home will still cost around $120 per sq. ft however my utility bill will be replaced with a cheque and I'll have enough power to have at least two racks of computer equipment on site. Now if I could just find a cheap rural optical provider I'd be set, then again "Cheap" and "Optical" never reside in the same sentence.



Well I guess once i have a fusion reactor on site I can simply use Boron and Hydrogen but that's at least a Decade away.

I've signed my life away.

Well From a provisional acceptance to a formal one:

Here's the confirmation e-mail I received today.

=====================================================================================
Dear Prospective Student,

Congratulations! I am pleased to announce your provisional acceptance into the Master of Science in Information Technology program of The University of Liverpool. Under the acceptance conditions that the University of Liverpool has put forth, you will be accepted unconditionally upon the completion of two modules.

Upon the receipt of this letter, please take the time to review if your registration process has been completed. Only when completed will you become a registered student of the University of Liverpool and allowed to begin the program.

1. Admission fee paid.

2. Student agreement signed and returned.

3. Arrangement of tuition fees in accordance with your signed student agreement.

If you have any concerns and/or questions regarding payment or completion of the above, please do not hesitate to contact your Enrolment Advisor or the Finance Department at finance@ohecampus.com

Sincerely,


Iris Effendi (B.Ed, Dip Teach)
Admissions Coordinator

=====================================================================================

Looks like I'm going to get a masters after all. Now for the real fun, the hard work and toil.

It's about that time again.

Oh displaying my ego online, pontifications on a note of somewhat mute stance? So, as of Today I have completed my Advanced Diploma in Computing from Oxford University. which was enough to get me into a Masters Program at the University of Liverpool. That's right what normally takes 6 to 8 years here takes only 3 in the United Kingdom, well they did pretty much invent the modern university standards used by most if not all north American schools. Which all in all makes me question the Merit of our Canadian Educational System on a whole. You see for those few of you that actually read this already know; I never finished high school, High school and me never got along that and teachers don't like bieng told they are wrong :D; not because I was not intelligent enough but because I was lazy, plain and simple. Mind you I had my share of excuses but an unstable home environment would be the primary cause of my litany of failures as a student.

This notion that I must have finished high school to further my education kept me from entering both university and college. I completed my GED with Algonquin in 2002. At the time all programs wanted me to enroll full time for an extra year, The only university in Canada that would recognize my work and experience in Information Technology was Western and even then they wanted full course prices for any credit given in an equivalency manner. I applied to Algonquin in 2002 they lost my application, and I gave up. I was looking at it and everywhere I looked we required 4 years for anything of merit (3 years for a Bachelor of Science with 1 for Honors).

Now the Program from Oxford is designed to catch people like me and teach us Systems and Requirements Engineering; very useful for my field since I act as a project manager half the time anyway, that and the evolving software market will have us outsourcing any work of value anyhow. 1 year and $5300 later (did I mention they might even buy my plane ticket to the awards ceremony in March?) and they give me a 60 Credit Equivalent 3rd year diploma from one of the Oldest institutions on the planet. I can't find anything even remotely that good here.

Now as for Masters applications, having experienced University of Phoenix's crap before for all of six months I decided that this time I'm going with Reputation, I want first class paper since it's going to be expensive in the first place. Within our program at Oxford the Tutor's MADE the course, as in not only did they make the projects and assignments but they also helped us in selecting our places of higher education thereafter. It's too bad Oxford does not have an online masters program, So I applied to University of Hartford (one of the best polytechnics in the U.K.)and the University of Liverpool. Since these were the only two major online programs available to me.

Here's the funny part, the University of Hartford wanted me to do a Bsc in Compsci before going into my MSc, that's an extra year so all told a 3 year program to the tune of $22K. (MSc is 12K+Bsc is another $10K). They still have not gotten back to me on my application, as it's august and everyone and their dog is on vacation.

Around the same time I was contacted by Admissions from the University of Liverpool. They had an exclusive application representative work with me, which was nice. Here I am trying to create my admissions and here is what sounds like someone with TONS of sales experience helping me apply. Needeless to say I have been accepted for my Masters studies at the Unversity of Liverpool, I sent all the same information to both institutions, Liverpool not only accepted me but is also way more expensive. ($30K CDN).

On a side Note I did make an informal application to the Queens Cambridge Executive MBa program offered here in Ottawa, they accepted me even before I completed my Advanced Diploma however their cost was way out to lunch ($73K). Upon recounting this story to a good family friend and retired school teacher he asked "How can they justify that cost for a one year program?" I currently know one person enrolled in that program whom is receiving federal sponsorship as he is employed at the c-level in the public sector he has stated that it's a "World Class MBa". Which makes me believe that our civil servants get way too much for tuition money, but I digress.

So for 36K all told I'll have a masters in Information Technology Security, I'm hoping to do an MBa as well. I figure I'll be able to put the following letters on my card "Adipl. MSc ITS. MBa. ...(insert certifications here)" Not that I'm a fan of showmanship but when I expect to charge in excess of $100 / hr for my services I want my clients to know what they are getting.

I still refuse to use it as a signature for my e-mail on principal, hell I don't even include my certs in e-mail now for a good reason, I like to engage my cohorts in an even playing field manner to allow their opinions to come out unabated so I may utilize them in consideration of all factors when looking for solutions.

So back to my point. Education in this country is overpriced, under-subsidized and not as competitive as other places in Europe like say France or the U.K. but why is that? These are the countries that the largest portion of Canada's population descended from, as a result do we feel that University should take 4 years? what's the principal? Is it an institution of higher learning or another method to babysit our teens as they mature?

We have first rate arts and sciences programs, however our engineering is world renowned with schools like Waterloo garnering fame from companies like RIM. Hell Carleton named their school after a man whom is one of the best Hedge fund managers in North America. yet the MBa there is only 10K.

Schools are cheaper for local students the U.K. Numbers above are for myself as a foreign student. Which brings me to my point;

Since when did education here take such a turn as to become non-competitive with other global middle power economies? It was unaccessable for me as an individual unless I had corporate sponsorship and even then why should my employer or business fork over close to $100K for time spent at the feet of those in business?

Like Mr. O'leary states "What about the Money?" the payback for any investment to be considered feasible is two years. I can afford $30K over 3 years, i cannot afford $73K over five. and I am in a middle upper class income bracket with corporate sponsorship. Even then I can barely grow my business with things the way they are now. So I am off to a cheap school that's been around for over 100 years, then maybe I'll hit up Carleton for an MBa after submitting my Dissertation for a Phd. to a few hundred non local institutions. The reson for that is so i can teach what I have learned. The reason for the MBa is so that I am taken seriously by my peers when I put forward my ideas that require funding.