Sam Stokes on Research in your life and studies

ESP: Extra-Sensory Perception or Embodied Social Proxies?

SoCal Sam — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:51:00 GMT

WTF? ESP? Satellite people? Is this a Coast to Coast show with George Noory for long haul truckers and insomniacs?

No, Embodied Social Proxies, this isn’t a problem that my team suffers from, even though we rarely meet in person, none of us meet in person or are collocated. Embodied Social Proxies are for teams that are mostly collocated, and this article is certainly worth taking a look at if you are thinking about developing a system to support teams that have one or two people who are working remotely.

Is your secret question really secret?

SoCal Sam — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:36:00 GMT

Take a look at this article: 'Secret' Questions Leave Accounts Vulnerable, now ask yourself: Could someone guess the answer to your secret question. I have always felt that these secret questions were silly and I usually have not utilize them. I structure my passwords in such a way that they are difficult to guess and difficult for me to forget.

The article recommends that use of several trusted friends and describes the process. A simple test of the trusted friend process indicates that 90% of the people who used trusted friends instead of secret questions were successful in resetting their password successfully.

Keeping your email account secure is very important. This article: 'Secret' Questions Leave Accounts Vulnerable is certainly worth the read.

Have a happy 4th of July! Be Safe!

SoCal Sam — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:27:00 GMT

Fireworks were initially invented by the Chinese, and likely the medical protocol for missing hands from explosions followed shortly.

In the United States July the Fourth represents the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, although the real date might have been July 2 depending on your legal point of view. The making of “joyous” noise and so forth slowly became a tradition, with the slow communications and independent nature of the US in the early years slowed the adoption of the fireworks and parades.

If you are going to the beach, make sure that you enter the water in a manner that allows you to check out the new environment, and all waters, except pools, are renewed everyday. I surf quite often, but I always, and I mean always do a quick wade out to check for sandbars, etc. Please do the same.

Fireworks are interesting since they are really the basis for our current civilization. If we didn’t have fireworks, created by the Chinese, then wars would have been forced to be fought with arrows, rocks, and catapults. The idea of combustion would have delayed and Carnot might not have investigated the concepts of Thermodynamics. Exploration of the Solar System would not have happened, and now with Voyager and the Pioneer craft would not have passed the edges of the Solar System.

July 4th is an important date in American History: Completing the signing of the Declaration of Independence

One of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was a “gentleman” scientist, as well as other things best not mentioned. He and one of his friends were into the science of cryptology. The Wall Street Journal carried an article on July 2, 2009 telling about a letter exchange between President Jefferson and his friend, his friend created a cipher so complex that he maintained that it couldn’t be broken by the entire human race. Like most ciphers, it is now broken, take a look at the article:

Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code

Using Bing, I quickly found the Professor who managed to crack the code: Lawren Smithline

One more thing about Thomas Jefferson, finished the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776, a sign of a good software developer. :)

Bottom line: Be safe, have fun, celebrate Independence! no matter where you are, write something important.

Microsoft Research asks: “When Is a Browser Not a Browser?”

SoCal Sam — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:45:38 GMT

A retail person might answer: “When they buy something!” Not the case here.

The question could be: Can a browser also be an operating system?

I don’t agree with Janie Chang, the author of this article in general, businesses are being forced to use web only applications by consulting firms that don’t know how to build rich client applications. Of course the consulting firms don’t have the money to retrain the students coming out of the universities that have trained to only think of the online paradigm. Creating rich interactive applications RIA is slightly more difficult and you do have to think of your customers needs. Using Web only applications means you don’t have to really supply what your customers want and need, a consultant can blame others, the hosting site, the web application developers etc.

Further into the article, Janie begins to describe an excellent idea: Gazelle, a browser that is also a browser. Of course, embedded developers who have developed apps for internet appliances have already explored this space, for the rest of the developers this might be new ground.

Take a look at this excellent article, even if I don’t really agree with all of it: When is a Browser Not a Browser?

F#: Using the Interactive Panel in VS 2010 Part 1

SoCal Sam — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:43:04 GMT

Use the Interactive Panel in VS 2010 to learn how to use F#. I have not included the code used in my examples, my guidance to you is to visit:

F# 1.9.6.16 Draft Language Specification,

start off with: “Making Data Simple” use the interactive panel to test the examples. Then work through the rest of the specification, as you do note down ideas that you have about how to use F#.

It’s pretty cool.

For the QuickStart viewers, my apologies for the latest of this video, I use MSN Videos and the system hasn’t been working well lately.

The video is also available for download, and easier viewing at the following link:

Coding Functionally

I should be able to get the rest of the talk posted over the next few days.

Doing Blogging the hard way or the easy way?

SoCal Sam — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:34:38 GMT

To break out a little from my normal technology discussion, I am thinking right now about how others generate traffic. Am I right to generate my own material or should I utilize other people’s videos and so forth? Many of my teammates are generating very high numbers utilizing short snippets, often by people other than themselves. I respect these teammates, and I think that they are doing a great job.

Which brings me to think that my own exploration in blogging has been ego centric in that I blog about what I am thinking about or exploring, not what to generate audience numbers. After all these blogs are generally an on the job hobby, instead of writing “best practices” or other documentations, I write the explorations into my several blogs.

My question is this: Should I focus on getting numbers or should I focus on writing and hope the audience that is reading my material appreciate it for the stream of consciousness that it is?

Actually it isn’t really a stream of consciousness, because if it was there would be all of those random sexual thoughts that I assume healthy males get, and then there would be the worries about my 401K, the health of my wife, mother, sister, dog and birds. Getting the oil changed in the car, how fortunate I am to own a car, condo with a nice view, have a job at Microsoft. Or it would include my thoughts about God, religion, the Star Trek movie, wondering whether I should waste the brain cells on going to see “Land Of the Lost”. Programming my PIC project I am currently preparing for Christmas 2009.

See, stream of consciousnees can be fun for a paragraph, but how do some of these people do it all of the time, it would be boring to read, after all how many of you have read James Joyce “Ulysses”? Uggh, every once in awhile I will pick up the copy my wife has kept from college and try to read it (“Ulysses”), I don’t get it. The book “Ulysses” was contraband in the US till 1933, proving that things that are forbidden are more attractive than things you can get easily. Somehow I doubt if any liberal arts student has actually read Ulysses for pleasure.

I would rather spend my time reading Feynman’s lectures or Bohr’s textbook on Thermodynamics.

Well back to the Microsoft Research exploration in the next blog. Which I consider the easy way to blog.

Cryptography: From ancient science to Win7 and Bing!

SoCal Sam — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:55:08 GMT

Microsoft is continuing to improve the science of cryptography. There are a number of approaches to cryptography and its application to securing the identity of people, data and systems.

Historically, the first codes were used by the Spartans, by wrapping a piece of paper around a stick and writing the message and then taking the paper off in a spiral manner. It could only be read if you used the same diameter stick. In some ways this is similar to current methods.

Later, the playwright Francis Bacon wrote about encryption in his Advancement of Learning, The Sixth Book, Chapter I.:

“But the virtues of them whereby they are to be preferr'd are Three; That they be ready, and not laborious to write; That they be sure, and lie not open to Deciphering; And lastly, if it be possible, that they may be managed without suspition [sic].”

This is a fair definition of the modern science of cryptography, during World War II, encryption systems on both sides of the war were broken, mainly through poor discipline. The operators would not change keys at the correct time, send key information unencrypted, and use old map grids that would reveal information, etc.

Currently cryptography is supported inside of the Windows CLR via a

Cryptography is the use of codes to convert data so that only a specific recipient will be able to read it, using a key.

Windows 2008, Vista and Win7 use the latest versions of cryptography, and this isn’t just utilization of more codes and a slight modification of the first generation processes like RSA. What is the process used in the cryptography API?

Starting around 2006, Microsoft will support the Crypto API, but will utilize more advance processes such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography through the Cryptography Next Generation (CNG) in all systems like Win7.

I am digging into these “new” ways of doing cryptography, especially the elliptic curve approach. But if you don’t really care how the cryptographic engine runs, just that it does run, you will need to dig into the Crypto Next Generation, if you haven’t already.

I also have found an article titled: “On Parallelization of High-Speed Processors for

Elliptic Curve Cryptography” on the IEEE Digital Library, it gives a good overview of how the Elliptic Curve Cryptography works. Interesting enough, it really is an excellent review of your basic algebra and a few simple use of matrix.

A little background, the top figure is the cryptographic process called Symmetric keys work.

The lower image is Public Key Encryption which many people think is the current crypto systems in use, this is hopefully the legacy system and most systems are switching to CNG

There are no images, right now, of how elliptic curve encryption, decryption works.

In conclusion, if you are building or upgrading existing systems you need to consider the CNG cryptography systems.

Computer Archeology: The Smiley, where did it come from?

SoCal Sam — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:16:47 GMT

The Smiley, where did it come from? Here is the first instance of the Smiley:

401298269,0,0 19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(

You can see the whole bboard file from CMU in 1982 at:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/mbj/smiley/bboard_contents.html

Funny stuff… Who says research has to be unfunny? :-)

Research: Singularity OS, take a look

SoCal Sam — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:26:09 GMT

In control systems, singularities are interesting points where the system might break down. In the movie Apollo 13 they kept talking about gimbals lock, which would occur if their spinning gyroscopes moved into certain angles they would lock up and then the information from them would not be useful.

In Astrophysics, black holes are considered to be gravitational end points or singularities.

At Microsoft Research, the future of Operating Systems may be in the Singularity OS, you can find it on the Singularity Codeplex site. It is BIG download, not sure why they don’t have a download manager in the downloads, you certainly could use one.

If you want to contribute to the research of Singularity OS, Microsoft may grant you developer permissions. If you are going to download it, you might want to consider using one of the free download mangers (Microsoft’s download manager only works with Microsoft Operation Manger system). I am experimenting with the FDM from http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm, all you do is install it (make sure to read those checkboxes!) and it will pick up that you are doing a download and manage it. To download singularity, you will definitely need to use a download manager, and you will need a large hard drive as the image is 56822K in size.

Looks like fun if you are into operating systems.

Towards programming languages for genetic engineering of living cells

SoCal Sam — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:18:03 GMT

Ok, still goofing off from my F# articles, but for now, one of my friends has a very bad cancer (not that any of them are good) called peritoneal carcinomatosis (PC), or PMP. On my other blog about Silverlight Games, I am discussing how to make a serious game that would help people understand this type of disease.

PC or PMP was the first cancer that the doctors (oncologists) used a molecular test of the patients genes, see the article: Gene Testing Predicts Response to Erbitux. I am not sure how that test worked, but wouldn’t it be great if from the test you could then write a software program that could then guide the construction of biological solutions to fix the damage from the cancer and to halt the cancer’s progress?

In a paper posted to the Microsoft Research site, there is a thick, dense paper that describes just that:

Towards programming languages for genetic engineering of living cells

Now this is an advanced, pie in the sky kind of thinking that makes the world a different place. It is the type of paper that I want to read over my vacation, it is so advanced. Imagine being able to create genetically manipulated bacteria using software. CRAZY you say! INSANE you say!

Ha-ha, not quite my friend, take a look at:

NeuroSolution and www.neurosolutions.com/resources/apps/beer.doc

The NeuroSolution is a current utilization of software to assist with a difficult biological process like the making of beer. And of course this would apply to other biological processes such as the creation of pharmaceuticals. Imagine a world where drugs can be tailored to the individual. It looks like Microsoft sponsored some research into that approach. This would impact orphan drugs early since the outputs from these genetic/biological material factories could be utilized to solve problems like PMP or PC.

How would you approach this type of idea? The software that you create could use a language like F#, C#, Visual Basic, or you could create a language that is exclusively to solve this type of problem. That type of language can be created using a Domain Specific Language (DSL). If you want to use the Microsoft tools to create a DSL, you can visit: Domain-Specific Language Tools

It’s fun to create your own languages!

Technorati Tags: F#,Artificial Intelligence,Silverlight,Domain Specific Languages

Could you organize a collaborative research project?

SoCal Sam — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:10:49 GMT

Using free stuff from Microsoft, could you organize a research project that was collaborative and be able to reach out all over the world for data and resources? Currently I have a relative that has PMP, an extremely rare type of cancer, about 300 cases in the year occur in the US, maybe 6,000 cases in the world. Not very many. This got me to thinking, while I am on a short break from work, I thought I would look at how I could design a collaborative research project. I have no delusions that a cure could come for my relative, but in the future it might help with research on other things.

At the Microsoft research site: http://research.microsoft.com, there is a bunch of interesting work being done. One of the ways that a collaborative research project could be set up would be to make use of the

Microsoft Computational Biology Web Tools, since biology wasn’t a strong suit for me in college, if you are biology specialists things like the

Epitope Prediction will make sense, apparently it applies to HIV viral mutations. Now some of the cancers have been found to be caused by viruses, wouldn’t it be a crazy thing if you were able to reuse work done for HIV investigations and find a way to cure one of these rare cancers!?

For the next several weeks this blog will be discussing the various tools available through the Microsoft Research site. I am retooling my F# discussions to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 design system and when I do, this blog will move back to discussing F# or I will create a new blog and take the hit for the change. The new blog will be specifically around the academic discussion of how to use F# to solve research problems. But now that I read that mission statement, I will likely just keep using this blog.

Student Research!

SoCal Sam — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:13:30 GMT

Zoom over to http://www.acm.org/src/, take a look at the student research that was supported by Microsoft Research. This is different than the Imagine Cup, in that the ACM is oriented toward research. If you a student, then you will need to use the digital library at your school to see the papers. If you are in industry, then hopefully your company subscribes or you can get access somehow. You can get the abstracts, which are just teasing descriptions of the papers.

I can’t really reprint anything here since there are clear boundaries generated by the ACM.

Technorati Tags: Student Research

Using Research in your everyday life: Math Add-in for Word 2007

SoCal Sam — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:34:23 GMT

I am working on generating some conherent F# articles, a first for me. In the mean time, I will include a series of article about items on Microsoft Research.

Today, take a look at this paper that an Imagine Cup participant wrote using Word 2007, the Equation Editor and the Microsoft Math Add-in fo r Microsoft Office Word 2007

(You don’t have to purchase the Microsoft Math Graphing Calculator, although it is a good deal, $19.95 US for a graphing calculator that runs on your laptop or desktop!).

Here is the paper by Jared, I had to cut and paste images of the page because of the way the blog engine we use at Microsoft works. I am impressed by the quality of the layout and that Jared was able to use the Math Add-in tool for Microsoft Word 2007, which is part of the Scholarly Communications component of Microsoft Research. Jared gave me permission to use his paper.

That’s it!

Technorati Tags: Physics homework,Math Add-in for Word,LaTex

F#: Ballistics, Rocketry and Research 5/7/2009

SoCal Sam — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:30:33 GMT

I just got back from the Foundation of Digital Games (FDG) Disney Cruise, and it WAS GREAT! I had great conversations with some of the best game researchers and professors on the planet, and we all couldn’t use our cell phones or do email without paying a bunch of money. ACM held the conference and the papers were awesome. They will be posted shortly, and I will definitely link to them. Then I went to the Imagine Cup US Nationals, and what a bunch of winning students!

Now I am looking forward to the Star Trek movie! (Hence the images, I got in the Webmaster program). WRT the Star Trek Movie, one of the things that I learned on the FDG Cruise was that Hollywood edit 194 of 196 movies using a Windows Based editor named Avid. I think that this is quite a bit different than I thought was used.

Taking a look at the Star Trek web site and I see it uses Flash, which is kind of 10 minutes ago, Silverlight is so much cooler. To use Flash, like they did on the Star Trek site, you are forced to use a modified version of javascript, which is the most boring actionscript created by Adobe. Using Silverlight I can use C#, F#, VB, VC++, IronPython, IronRuby, and when it comes out IronPHP, the resulting sites are much more robust. Silverlight works on Windows, Apple and some versions of Linux, inside of many of the browsers. Flash doesn’t always work in all of the browsers and just recently started working in most of the browsers. The games appear to be the typical Flash based games, which means they are static and not all that interesting. The Star Trek Movie web site is awesome even if it is held back by 20th century technology in the 21st century.

Let’s move on with the reading of the program by Chris Smith called BurnedLands, scroll down to F#: Ballistics, Rocketry and Research 4/12/2009 in this blog. Let’s face it, ballistics and rockets have to be understood before you get to view the Star Trek Physics. We are looking at the Math Module, if you have downloaded the code as well as the F# add-in for Visual Studio or the stand alone versions of F#, we are reviewing the Math.FS code, and just a few of the lines (that is: the following code won’t work by itself):

Today, it will be one line only, as I want to get this posted:

type Vector< [<Measure>] 'a>(x : float<'a>, y : float<'a>) =

type Vector< [<Measure>]

In F# types are:

Records: This is sum types are also referred to as union types
Tuples: These are a set of types composed to form a composite type similar to classes in C#

Vector

F# includes matrix and column vector types:

Matrix vector types are generic and use the form: Matrix<'a>
Column vector types, are generally used to describe direction and magnitude, they use the form: Vector<'a>

<[Measure] ‘a>

The Measure attribute tells F# that units kg, s and m aren't really types in the usual sense of the word, but are used to build units-of-measure.
In this case, the [Measure] is telling the compiler to check the units for correctness.
‘a is a type parameterization, a special process in F# where a type is not known, but it will match the value that is returned, as you read the line you see that the ‘a is turned to the type of Float. The purpose of this is to help the compiler to find more type errors at compile time and helps avoid casting.

(x : float<'a>, y : float<'a>) =

the variables x and y become the same variable type as ‘a

That’s it for today, for the next few posts, I will be discussing the new stuff that is coming out of Research.

Technorati Tags: F#,Star Trek,type Vectors,<Measure>

Intro to Math Add-in for Word 2007

SoCal Sam — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:53:52 GMT

This is a REALLY cool tool for people who are taking Math, Engineering or Science classes. I am going to take a break from the analysis of the BurnedLand example, since we need to make sure that we have a way to simulate and create our expected output from our F# tools and simulator.

The Math Add In for Word 2007 is an extension to the Equation Editor already included with Word 2007, and answers the question: “Why doesn’t the Equation Editor solve the equations?” Using the Math Add-In for Word 2007 allows you to create complex equations that resolves both the graph as well as solve the equations.

First, you need to go to the Microsoft Research Site’s Microsoft Office Add-ins for Scientists, then select the Microsoft Math Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007 link (I hope that you go to the Research site and take a look around). Once you get to the download site you can save the installer or run it directly, it only takes a few minutes. Before you could use the Equation editor from the Insert ribbon bar, but the equations just kind of laid there in your documents. Now you can write equations and if you share the documents with other people they can use the Math Add-In tool to check your equations and concepts. This is really POWERFUL!

Once you have installed the Math Add-In for Word 2007, you will have a new ribbon item: “Add-Ins”. When you start to use the Math Add-in tool, it will look like you are in the Equation Editor, but you aren’t, see the table below for the whole process to get a graph. Or watch the video, or do both!

Why would you buy the Microsoft Math Calculator?

It would allow you to use a standard graphic calculator approach to your homework and you would be able to print out the column of numbers.

Will the Math Add-in for Word 2007 help you out with your homework?

Yes.

Will it help out with word problems?

No, you still have to do the set-up, it help you visualize the solution though and determine if you are on the right track.

Will Math Add-in for Word 2007 mean you don’t have to learn how to write programs?

No, most likely means you will have to get better at writing programs.

Your ribbon bar will have an additional item: “Add-Ins” if you didn’t have an Add-in before installing the Math Add-in
Once you select the Add-Ins ribbon bar item. You can now select the “Insert New Equation”
Use the Equation Editor to enter your equations. For example when you are solving for trig functions, use an angle indication and the graph will calculate for r (as an example). If you use a variable like x for the angle then the Math Add-in will attempt to solve for r and x.
To get a graph of your function select Plot in 2D If the equation can be used to plot 3D then that will be on the menu. If your equation has an error, the the drop will indicate that.
Here is the graph control, pretty cool! If you want to get a numeric output, then you will need to buy the Microsoft Math calculator for $19.95 US (could be higher if you are reading this after April 20, 2010). It’s a pretty cool graphing calculator. Could you get the same capability with a TI Graphing calculator? Yes you can, but the graphics isn’t quite a clean, but you can use it on the AP exams.

Technorati Tags: Calculus,Physics,Physics homework solutions